Wand Runner
by japanese-jew
Summary: It's not every day that Harry walks home from the grocery store to find a girl who seems to think that she's him. If she is him, then who is he?
1. Chapter 1

_Lord, what fools these mortals be!_

A Midsummer Night's Dream

William Shakespeare

(III, II, 115)

A scrawny young man with stunningly green eyes slammed the door. He yelled through the window next to it, "OKAY! I'll get your bloody, flaming . . . um . . . um . . . eggs! But don't blame me if Volde-bloody-mort comes while I'm gone, or if I get kidnaped by one of the dark lord's followers and the Order gets pi-" The Boy-Who-Lived moved his head quicker than he had previously thought possible, narrowly avoiding losing it in an unfortunate window-closing accident. He gave the prim house and perfect "award winning" garden (in which he had labored many a day) one final glare, and jogged off.

Harry pushed his messy, jet black hair out of his eyes, and slowed down as he began to feel the effects of jogging several blocks. He was pale from not leaving the house in a month or so, and rather out of shape. At Hogwarts, Harry had been kept in some degree of fitness by walking up and down the numerous flights of stairs, and running between classes, and before Hogwarts he had run from Dudley for miles, but while in his 'house arrest', he hadn't really gotten any exercise. Harry panted hard, and kept on going forwards, walking now.

Harry turned left on Wisteria Walk. He glowering across the street at Dudley's gang, who were smoking in the alley between wisteria Walk and Magnolia Crescent, and they sniggered as he walked by, a few calling out, "Mad Potter!", or "Wanker!" He flicked them off, and in their stoned state, they were too high to do anything other than growl. One, who seemed slightly more lucid than the others, walked forwards towards him arrogantly, but seeing that no one followed, quickly moved back and straightened his coat, pretending that nothing had happened.

Harry muttered a few expletives under his breath, before turning right on Magnolia Road. He surreptitiously looked around himself, feigning stretching his neck, and seeing neither a minder, nor Death Eaters, he advanced briskly. A woman, seeing that he was walking in her general direction, pulled her child along with herself to the other side of the street, but Harry ignored her, and just kept on walking forward.

On Magnolia Road, a block or two before the store, he had the disturbing feeling that someone had turned up the temperature in Surrey, since the abnormally cold July day was instantaneously an average and warm July day, and his overly large hand-me-down sweatshirt was now overly warm, as well. He pulled it off, and kept on walking towards the store. He noticed a house with a cool blue exterior as opposed to the white of all the other, that he could've sworn was a light green, but quickly forgot about it, assuming that he must have a faulty memory. Another family, consisting of a moth, a father, and small child, seven or eight years old, passed by him, barely noticing him, although the mother smiled down at him, and the child waved happily at him. Barely believing it, he waved back, and the child beamed, before walking past him. _Odd . . . the parents didn't run screaming. The child might not have been old enough to know about 'watching out for the Potter boy', but Aunt Petunia should've gotten to all of the families by now, unless they're new . . . . Ah, they must be new to this part of Surrey. _He pushed this too from his mind, and thought about the task at hand. _Eggs._

Harry crossed the street to the grocery store, entered it confidently, and walked towards the refrigerator. Then, he panicked, realizing that he had completely forgotten what kind of eggs to get. _How many? Oh, a dozen. Or two? No, one dozen. But medium? Or large? Or extra large? Or jumbo? Hell, better go with jumbo. Aunt Petunia wouldn't want anything less than the biggest. Look at her most prized possessions, Vernon and Dursley. _Smiling, and thanking Merlin for life's little victories, he picked up a carton with "Dozen - Jumbo" labeled on it. He tossed it from his left hand to his right, nearly dropping it and turned to go to the cashier. Oddly enough, the cashier wasn't looking suspiciously at him, but at the moderately pretty, pale girl with long black hair that cascaded down her front and back, partially covering her face. She had just entered the store, and was walking purposefully with her head down, towards the refrigerator where he was standing.

Harry moved to the left of the refrigerator, and disinterestedly watched her pick her product. She reached for the medium, two dozen eggs, before stopping, moving her hand back again, and straightening up. A frown appeared on her face, and her eyes darted from the top shelf, with medium eggs, and the shelf right below it, with jumbo eggs. Finally, she picked the eggs labeled "Dozen - Jumbo", and smiling, attempted to go towards the cash register. Without looking up, she unintentionally head-butted Harry in the chin, making him exclaim "Ow!" rather loudly, and rub his chin. She quickly backed up, and looked at Harry in surprise, blushing fiercely. He was blushing pretty hard too, since he felt almost like a voyeur, for some odd reason, watching her pick her groceries. He also though he saw a glimpse of red on her forehead, but it was only for a second, before her hair covered it again.

She muttered, "Excuse me," and quickly maneuvered around him. She went towards the grocer, who sniffed angrily at her, before accepting her fiver. Harry got in line behind her, face still red, and noticed that in her excessively large pants, she had put her wand in her back pocket. A bit of holly was visible between the shirt and pants, and he smiled at seeing a fellow magician in Surrey, before blushing even harder, realizing where he was looking, now feeling like not only a voyeur, but also a major pervert. She walked out of the store, the shop owner still looking at her as if she were a serial killer on parole, and Harry pulled a fiver from his pocket, and threw it absentmindedly onto the counter. The grocer's attention snapped to Harry, and the grocer smiled amiably at Harry, before giving him his change. Harry arched an eyebrow, but said nothing.

Harry jogged out towards the girl, and then slowed to a walk. He called forward, "Hey! You! Slow down!" The girl slowed down, seeming rather surprised that anyone wanted to talk to her. She looked back, and arched an eyebrow at him. He grinned, and moved up, next to her. "I know this is kind of random, but, you know, I'm doing a survey on . . . stuff. What did you think of Bambi? You know, the Disney movie."

She arched her eyebrow again, but still answered, "Um . . . well, I thought the stuff with the . . . um, hunters, was really sad and everything, and the bit with that hedgehog. . . . . Um . . . Thumper? Really . . . adorable. Yeah." She was mumbling by the end, and looking to her right.

He smiled smugly, enjoying the feeling of knowing something she didn't, and being in power, asked, more liked stated, really, his voice full of laughter, "You've never seen Bambi, have you." She tensed, and looked at her feet, and he laughed a little more, before saying, "That's okay, I haven't seen Bambi either, and I"m not really taking a survey. Just wanted to know if you had seen it." She sped up a little, and Harry jogged forward to catch up to her. When he caught up with her, he leaned over her should, and whispered, "Don't put your wand there, girl! What if it ignited? Better witches than you have lost buttocks, you know" She jerked heard around, and quickly pulled out said wand and pointed it at him.

"Who the fuck are you?" She queried accusingly, eyes wide.

He smirked. "Another wizard, and don't worry, I won't kill you. . . unless you're a Death Eater." He pulled his own wand quickly, and pointed it at her.

She whispered, "Forearm," and both pulled their sleeve back, each revealing perfectly smooth, pale skin.

She grinned, and putting her wand back, said, "The Bambi thing was mean. I've heard of it, but I really didn't know anything about it . . . and. . . . Damn, thumper was a rabbit, wasn't he."

He nodded, and started walking again. He questioned, "Which school do you go to?"

She responded easily, "Hogwarts. Just took my OWLs, going into sixth year. What year are you going into?"

"Sixth, too," he answered, delighted. "What house?"

"Gryffindor. If you don't really know the houses, Gryffindor is the house of bravery, courage, and . . . foolhardiness." She looked sadly at her feet again, shuffling forwards. Harry was remorseful as well, remembering his foolhardy rush into the Department of Mysteries, and the subsequent . . . relocation of his godfather. _Maybe he really is in heaven,_ he thought to himself, morbidly, _Or then again, maybe he's in hell, roasting along with Hitler . . . Although more like roasting Hitler along with the Devil, takin' down a few beers with the big man in red. _He sniggered inwardly at the thought, not laughing out loud so that she wouldn't be offended. However, he was also racking his brain for who she could be, since he thought he knew all of the Gryffindor girls. He pondered_, Definitely not Hermione, not Patil, she's Indian, not Lavender_,_wrong colour hair, and there aren't any other girls, are there? __Some more investigation is required._

She interrupted his thoughts, and noted the gang on Wisteria Walk, telling Harry, "That fat fuck right there is my cousin."

At first, Harry thought she meant Dudley, but then he realized that there were at least four 'fat fucks' that she could be referring to, and gravely informed her, "Well, it appears that our fat fuck cousins know each other. Mine's one of the other ones."

She giggled, before stopping herself, horrified. Harry was kind of horrified, both that she was a giggler, and also that he was having fun while Sirius was . . . elsewhere. She seemed remorseful as well, but didn't appear to be as sad as Harry felt. She appeared to be telling herself something, and she shrugged her right shoulder towards the most lucid of the boys. "That one was hitting on me, and I had to slap him a few times to get him to let go of me," she bragged.

The aforementioned boy noticed their looks, and quickly tried to make himself as small as possible, which would have been much simpler in the folds of the coat that Harry vaguely remembered him wearing. "Nice," Harry replied.

She grinned, and nodded, almost arrogantly. A silence fell upon the two of them, and Harry suddenly realized that it was the silence of the oldest of friends, a comfortable silence. Harry reluctantly broke the silence, intending to do that investigation that he had resolved to do.

"Who're your friends at Hogwarts?" he innocently inquired.

"Mmmm . . . Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, his sister Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood, and Neville Longbottom. Er, Ginny and Luna are both a year younger than us, and Luna Lovegood is actually in Ravenclaw, the house–"

Harry cut her off, slightly alarmed, but still acting as casually as possible, "Oh, right, I forgot to ask– what's your muggle cousin's name?"

She looked oddly at him for the sudden, and slightly off topic question, and answered, "Cousin's Dudley. His mum calls him 'Ickle Diddykins', thought."

Understandably confused, Harry kept up his facade of being ignorant of Hogwarts, and that this girl hadn't just almost stolen all of his friends from him, and feigning irritation with himself, shook his head once, very quickly. "Oh, bloody hell. What's your name again?"

Her grin faded slightly, and she looked slightly rueful. "Er . . . Hera Potter."

Harry's eyes widened, and he walked forward a step, before lifting his hand towards her face. He hesitated for a second, before roughly brushing the hair off of her face, revealing way bright green eyes, and a light pink scar zigzagging across her forehead, starting at her hairline, and ending right before her right eyebrow. He quickly retracted his arm, and just stared in disbelief. "Well, the Girl-Who-Lived, eh?" he asked nervously, completely nonplused.

Hera looked at him oddly, fiddling with her fringe until the scar was completely covered, before replying, "Well, I haven't heard that one before, but I suppose." She sighed, putting her hands in her pockets. "The typical one is, of course, The Last Potter."

"Of course." Harry was once again, understandably, dumbfounded. Part of his mind was telling him that it could be a Death Eater trap, no, **must** be a Death Eater trap, part of his mind was telling him that she was telling the truth, and that she really _had_ experienced the same things as him, and then a small part of his mind was telling him he was insane. He ignored the first and third, hoping the second was closest to the truth, and smiled broadly. "You know . . . I've always wanted to talk to you!"

"Really?" she asked, skeptically.

"No. But that's beside the point." He paused, thinking rapidly. "You know, you can help me."

"How so?" she again asked, equally skeptically.

"I'm an import from Canada. Er . . . that guy wasn't actually my cousin, I was just kidding, really. My parents always wanted me to see England– They were British you know, you've got some great history – but we were never very well off, and it was all my parents could do to portkey me here. To make a long story short, I'm broke. You've got friends, and just your name carries power. If you would give me a recommendation. . . ."

"And what's in it for me?" Hera countered, pleased at the thought that her fame could actually help someone.

Harry smirked. "I've been to Diagon Alley before. Stores like Gambol and Japes, WWW . . . you get the idea. I could get you some . . . gifts for your . . . delightful cousin." He tried the 'puppy dog face' but it failed dismally– he couldn't stop smirking. "And, of course, out of the goodness of your heart."

"Yeah. Right. But 'Big D' could use a canary cream or two. . . . I'll do you one better. Fred and George owe me one or a thousand favors. I'll give you a note. They'll take you on. C'mon."

Hera walked to #4, before opening the door and ushering him in. "Quiet. Don't want Aunt Pet–"

"Dudley?" a shrill voice asked of them. The banshee herself lookd up from where she was vacuuming, but sneered when she saw Hera. "Oh, it's you. Well, don't waste time! Go on, put the eggs on the table. And–" Petunia stopped midsentence, gaping at Harry. She whispered, "Potter . . ." her eyes wide.

In the awkward silence, Harry realized that she must have thought he was his father, back from the grave. "Sorry, I'm not a Potter." He smiled tightly, putting a hand on Hera's shoulder. "That's only your niece, I'm afraid." The silence grew more uncomfortable, and Harry remembered the new piece that his Aunt liked to brag about. "Nice place you have here." He glanced over to the mantle, and pretended to notice the paint for the first time. "Whoa, is that a Dali? An actual Dali? I thought they were all in museums. . . ." Harry practically drooled in his fake awe. _Hmm, this acting bit is kind of nice_.

Shaken out of her shock, Aunt Petunia began to warm to this James look-a-like. "Why, yes, it is. . . ." she smiled widely at Harry, before glaring at her niece. "I hope _she_ hasn't been giving you any trouble, Mr. . . ."

Thinking quickly, for muggle names, Harry was reminded of Hermione. She knew a lot about muggles. Speaking of muggles, she met a muggle over the summer named Mortimer . . . "Mortimer." And when she went to France, she complained about their rare meat. It was . . . too raw? And literally . . . "Saignant. Mortimer Saignant." Harry suddenly realized that he had just designed a new name for himself completely based on random stuff that had popped into his head, and barely managed to prevent himself from slapping said body part. "And no," he added, "Mrs. Dursley, Hera has been wonderful."

Aunt Petunia smiled again at Harry, a rather odd expression for him to see directed at him, and then gave Hera a dirty look. "Another of those ruddy . . ." she glanced at Harry, "_things_ came by, and left a box on the table. I put it by your room. And put down those eggs."Hera nodded, put her eggs down (Harry did the same), and sprinted up to the smallest bedroom, Harry on her tail. "That was bloody great!" she howled, pulling him over to her trunk, opening it, and pulling out a piece of paper.

She quickly wrote, 'The bearer of this note needs a job. See what you can do.' After carefully printing her name, and scribbling out her signature, she handed the parchment to him with great aplomb, and stage-whispered, "Keep it safe."

He nodded seriously, assuring her, "Anything for you, milady." Getting down on one knee, he bowed his head. Hera flicked his bowed head, then grinned, and picked up the box by her door to examine it. It was a plain box, which oddly enough had all of the characteristics of wand wood, such as a complete and utter lack of knots or blemishes, and gave off a slight tingle, a peculiar vibration. The box had a sliding top with a small indentation for fingers to pill it. Hera pit it on her bed, and pulled it open, revealing folders, and two small wooden boxes in an obviously enlarged space. She pulled out the folders, and was somewhat surprised when the inside shrank a little. Hera passed the grey folder with a castle in the middle of a pond, in the corner to Harry, taking the black folder with the white skull in the corner for herself. He took it, and opened it after she mimed doing it with her own folder. On the first page, at the top, it said in reddish-brown ink, "Summary of Potter Account." It went on to describe the two houses that Potter owned, a small cottage by the channel, and the House at Godric's Hollow (Destroyed). Apparently, the Potters had roughly 200,000 galleons, a relatively modest fortune. Below the number in parentheses, it read, "Approx. 1 million pounds,." Harry began to hand the folder back to Hera, before a small piece of parchment fell out of it, landing on the bed. Quickly skimming it, Harry blanched, before handing the note to Hera in place of the folder.

Surprised at the state of Harry's visage, she began to read it aloud. "Sorry pumpkin– pumpkin? Well, I suppose I was one years old at the time– anyways, sorry pumpkin, but because you're a woman, there are some artifacts that you can't inherit. You're only inheriting . . . blah blah blah . . . patriarchal . . . okay, so my parents transferred all of the Potter's cash into my mom's account, and I can get that from there. Okay. So I lose some enchanted crap, and a house, that's not so bad," she muttered, under her breath. "Certainly, this didn't warrant a completely change in the colour of your face, Mortimer."

"I– I thought you'd be severely disappointed."

Hera laughed, not a silly giggle like before, but a full throated laugh, that sounded vaguely like a peculiar cross between a horse and a dolphin. A good laugh. "Mortimer, I'm offended!" she exclaimed. "I'm not half that shallow." She made sort of rebuking hand motion, by quickly moving the tip of her right index finger down the length of her left, and said, "Tsk, tsk."

Harry smiled weakly, as he had never believed that she was that shallow in the first place. In truth, he had blanched because to **him**, the paper read:

Dear lucky bloke reading this. This, the Potter Vault, is all yours. That's right. Ms. Hera Potter can't inherit because she's a woman. She'll be getting the cash, and you'll be getting the stuff. Happy fucking birthday.

Sincerely, James S. Potter

Head of House Potter; Order of Circe, Third Class

PS Goddamn you if you're a bastard.

PPS Vault 97, just a few drops.

So Harry was, understandably, pale. It felt, somehow, like he had just stolen something from his counterpart, although he realized in a more logical part of his brain that it was his to begin with, and blazed the number 97 into his mind, for later use.

Shortly, Harry was forcefully taken out of his thoughts concerning the morals of the taking of the inheritance away from Hera, when she burst out laughing. "Look at this," she exclaimed, her laugh turning into a choke. Harry looked at her face, and saw two conflicting emotions, horrible pain, and overwhelming amusement. She thrust the folder with the skull towards Harry, and he skimmed it over. There were a bad puns, some tasteless jokes, and the silly metaphor or two, but it had a lot of serious information. Sirius, who had written the will, regretfully informed Hera that news of his death had not, in fact, been exaggerated. It also said that she was going to get a lot of cash, somewhere in the hundreds of millions of galleons range.

Harry let out a low whistle. "Meh, I suppose the stuff you're losing to the hypothetical 'Other Potter' isn't worth half that, right?"

Hera stopped laughing, stopped beginning to cry, and cooled down to a neutral medium. "Yeah," she said simply. Harry was unsure whether it was in response to what he had asked, or to something she had resolved in herself. It made him feel slightly uncomfortable.

"Hmm." Harry did some quick figuring in his mind, and his eyes practically popped out of his head. "Holy shit," he muttered, quickly followed by the exclamation of, "You're a fucking billionaire in pounds!"

"I suppose you're right," she replied quietly, and somewhat introspectively.

Harry handed the folder back to her, and she put both of the folders back in the box. The Potter folder abruptly disappeared, and a small, bronze coloured dragon flew in seconds later, clutching another, significantly smaller box between its front claws, using a peculiar device that seemed to be designed to allow it to carry objects such as it was. However, before Harry could get a good glance at it, it dropped its cargo onto Hera's bed, and sped out again, much faster than any owl that he had ever seen.

Harry let out a breath that he hadn't known he was holding, exhaling loudly. "I suppose Gringotts _does_ have dragons," he murmured.

Hera nodded in agreement, and replied, "Could be someone else, but somehow I doubt it." She opened the tiny black box, and both Potters were rather surprised to see a plain silver ring.

Harry whistled appreciatively. "Should've expected a family ring," he said. Neville had said that he was probably getting House Longbottom's ring, seeing as he was the oldest living Longbottom male, and with very little urging, McClaggen, a sixth year at the time, had very proudly shown off his own ring. Presumably, Hera had seen the same thing. Hera simply stared at it, her eyes full of trepidation. Harry nudged her to put it on, but she placed it on the bed.

"I somehow feel like I'm killing Sirius all over again, if I put it on," she whispered in response to another of Harry's nudges, staring at hands, palms facing her.

Harry sighed, and took it out of the box himself, slipping it onto her left ring finger. "Well, don't worry, I'll kill Sirius for you."

She looked up, her lips pursed, and Harry nearly fell off his trunk, as she changed before his eyes. Where Hera Potter, daughter of Lily and James Potter had once sat, now sat Hera Black, scion of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Her bright green eyes had darkened ever so slighter, the hair fell obediently down her back, perfectly straight, with a slight sheen to it. Her cheekbones had risen, and her legs lengthened ever so slightly, and shoulders slightly broadened.

Seeing Harry's reaction, she delicately arched an eyebrow, an action that would've seemed out of place on the old Hera, but looked just right on the new.

Harry raised an eyebrow himself, although his action was clumsy, and unpracticed. "You look different," he said bluntly.

Hera, grabbed his arm, and still scowling, dragged him to the nearest mirror, the one in the bathroom. Hera began examining her new body, taking its existence much more calmly than Harry. She began talking, half to herself, and half to Harry. "Well, I sure look like a Black now," she mentioned, unconsciously reiterating Harry's thoughts. "I suppose he gave me a magical adoption when I put on the ring. I guess he really wanted this to happen," she reasoned, purging the last of the guilt she felt for obtaining what felt like blood money. "Sneaky bastard. Ooh . . . nice hair . . . tamable . . . nice face . . . aristocratic," she made a face in the mirror. "Ugh, like a Greengrass." she paused, and looking into the reflection of Harry's eyes in the mirror, muttered, "Oh fuck, my tits are smaller." Harry blushed, and she laughed, her voice much deeper. "Not bad, Sirius . . . not bad at all for a dead man." After her last sentence, Harry painfully remembered that Sirius was, in fact, dead, and would never be coming back. He bowed his head, and supposed that he had learned everything that he had needed to learn in order to survive in this foreign world.

"I should go, if I want to contact the twins before they close up." Harry began to walk towards the door, Hera close behind.

The two of them were nearly at her door, when Hera suddenly came up with a rather good question. "How the hell are you going to get to London?" she asked.

Harry shrugged, and frowned. "Knight Bus?" he ventured.

"Isn't that just for at night? Ergo the name?" she countered.

Harry shrugged again, walked out the door, down the walk, and to the road, where he inconspicuously stuck out a bit of his wand. Thirty seconds later, a black cab rolled up, and Harry got in, waving good-bye.

Right before Harry slammed the door, he remembered that he had forgotten a necessary bit of his cover story, and went back up to Hera, who was waving from her steps leading up to the porch. "By the way, next time you see me, I'll look different." Hera delicately arched her eyebrow again, as if to say, 'Oh?' and Harry continued, "My family originally located to Canada because they had some enemies, so this is a disguise. I purchased it from Cos-zard on the Alley. You know what it's called?"

Hera rolled her eyes, and bluntly replied, "No."

Harry rolled his eyes, too, and gave a lopsided grin, tilting his head to the side. "C'mon, humor me."

She sighed, but did as he bid. "Okay, Mort," she said, wearily, "What's it called?"

Harry grinned wickedly, and pushed aside his hair, revealing his scar. "Harry Potter."

She gaped, as if at a train wreck, not wanting to look at it, but not being able to look away. "That's disgusting," she breathed.

Harry smirked, and went back to the taxicab. Hera yelled for him to owl soon, and he nodded absentmindedly, reflecting on the start of his new life.

* * *

Just deleted a really long A/N. You should be thankful. Anyways, I'm sorry I didn't update my other story, (whatever it's called, Wit of the Raven or something silly like that) but this wouldn't let me go until I retyped this. I actually wrote this ages ago, and when my computer crashed, I was too desolate to retype it, but with Amerision and Silver Aegis with THEIR boy!Harry meets girl!Harry stories on the scene, I figured that I might as well venture my luck.

This chapter is subject to change, since I'm excruciatingly low on sleep, and may have to fill in holes in the plot, later on. Writing may seem stilted, as I wrote most of it around a year ago.

Er, right. The quote should be on the right, but ff doesn't like putting stuff on the right. this is the best I'm getting.

Edit: Got some typos.

Edit2: Got some more typos.


	2. Chapter 2

At this point in time, I have not made any money off of materials owned by JKR or WB. Nor do I intend to.

* * *

"Where to?" the driver asked automatically, not even turning around to look Harry in the face.

"Er, Leaky Cauldron," Harry said, slightly nervously.

"Two galleons," he informed Harry disinterestedly.

Harry's eyes nearly popped out of his face. That was around three times as much as the knight bus had cost. "Bloody hell," he muttered, sifting around in his pocket for the large gold coins. He suddenly realized that he had left most of his money back in _his_ house, and that he would only have four galleons, not including sickles and knuts, after paying the price for this. _The twins had better still be open, or I'm screwed, _he thought. He handed the galleons to the driver, and asked, "Why's it so much more expensive than the knight bus?"

"Trickier charms for day, less muggles on the road at night, you also get extra fees for rush hour, between four-thirty and seven, you know, the usual. Also, you can't just have a bus pop out of nowhere in the middle of the day, that's the trickiest part. We actually have to have a taxi stationed every few miles. It's cheaper if you call beforehand," the man replied, obviously glad to have someone to speak with. "Whatcha doing 'round here? I don't get many wizards out here."

"Er, visiting Hera Potter," Harry said casually. The taxi abruptly came to a stop, and pulled over to a parking stop. The driver completely turned around, and the car neatly parked itself into a tight space, as the driver gaped at Harry.

"She lives in Surrey?" he asked, amazed. "I never knew. Where? I might be able to stop by, you know, get her autograph, if I knew her address, on my off time . . ." he trailed off, expectantly.

"Sorry," Harry said, not really sorry at all, "She's completely sealed off from the outside world, now that Voldemort is back and all."

The driver flinched, whipped around, and started driving forward again, getting out of his tight parking spot only by sliding over the car in front of him. He stomped on the pedal, and only began to slow down when he was a good mile away from where they were before. "Don't say that name, boy!" he ordered harshly, not taking his eyes off the road. "You say the name and he-who-must-not-be-named will come and kill you. That happened to the Prewetts, the Boneses, the Steins- you name it." He jerked his head back in the direction of Surrey, and muttered, "Heard the Potters were targeted for the same reason, tho' it could've been cause she's the Chosen One, you know."

Harry had most decidedly not heard any of that, especially not the Chosen One bit, but was suitably reminded that no one really wanted to hear him say Voldemort, and wisely stayed silent. The driver did too, and it was a fairly uncomfortable twenty minute ride to the Leaky Cauldron. Harry thanked the driver tersely, and the driver drove off, presumably back to his post in Surrey.

Harry entered the Leaky Cauldron, and was pleasantly surprised when no one begged to see his scar, or get a handshake. He briskly walked through, not stopping to get a drink from the bar, and went to the brick wall outside, where he counted three up from the dustbin, and then two across, and tapped the slightly protuberant and off-coloured brick. The bricks promptly moved aside, and he was suddenly inside Diagon Alley.

Harry walked into the information kiosk next to one of the nicer looking apothecaries, and was directed by a very elderly and kindly witch towards Trip W, the name by which Weasley Wizarding Wheezes was going, at 93 Diagon Alley, just 100 meters North of the Kiosk.

When Harry arrived, he noticed a help wanted sign in a window. Harry walked in, and saw Fred and George comfortably chatting with the customers who drifting in and out of the large and luridly coloured shop. Harry walked in, and went to the end of the line, a respectable eleven people, mostly kids. Harry thought that he might've recognized a few second or third years who giggling over the canary creams, but wasn't sure.

Finally, after the surprisingly elderly lady in front of him bought a surprisingly large number of decoy detonators, Harry was at the front of the line. "What can you do for me, m'man?" Fred asked, jovially.

Harry smiled, and replied by sliding the note from Hera to Fred. Fred raised his eyebrows, and replied by moving to the window, and taking down the "Help Wanted" sign. "I thought you looked familiar," he began, moving back to his spot behind the desk, "But I didn't know that Hera had any relatives," he continued.

"She doesn't," Harry replied, somewhat surprised at the instant service. "This is just a disguise. I'll revert to my regular self in a few days."

Fred raised his eyebrows suggestively, and nudged his brother, who had just moved up to the counter next to Fred, in the ribs. "Eh, the dark and mysterious stranger, eh? Our ickle Hera is moving up the world." He quickly whispered something to George, and showed him the note. George gave a knowing smile, and winked at Harry. Harry rolled his eyes, but smiled. It seemed that Hera was the only real difference in the world.

Fred and George decided that they would show Harry the ropes when the shop closed in a few hours, at seven. "We had it open past then, but we started getting loads of drunks, who'd buy up loads of Peruvian Darkness Powder, and drop it in the Alley. We were getting loads of shit from the Alley's owners, so we had to close. We think we might get a hangover remedy thing going, if we can figure out how to get it to taste good."

"That's our promise," Fred bragged, conjuring a mock "ye olde shoppe" shop. It read, 'WWW - Nothing Tastes Like Shit". After dispelling the sign, they told Harry to take a day off and have some fun, go back to his house or something. Harry tried to get up the nerve to ask if they knew a place where he could stay, but decided against it at the last second, opting to check out his family vault first.

When he went outside, the first thing that he noticed was another small, bronze coloured dragon outside. Harry briskly walked towards Knockturn Alley, and the dragon followed him. He tried slowing down, and the dragon matched his pace. It was undoubtedly another ring, this time his, for the Potter family. He decided to ignore it, since it didn't seem obliged to give him the box just yet.

When he reached Gringotts, the dragon stopped following him, and rested on Gringott's roof, apparently to wait until he came back out. After he got inside, he was escorted by a talkative goblin by the name of Flyfeather to vault 97. When the two of them finally got out of the cart, exhilarated and laughing, Flyfeather was very surprised to see that it was simply a door, without a place for a key, or a goblin finger. He whistled, and asked, "Bloody hell mate, it's not every day you see an ole fam'ly vault." He produced a slim syringe, and without asking Harry's permission, quickly took a few milliliters of blood from Harry. Harry cursed loudly, and Flyfeather blithely asked, "How much?"

Harry wasn't sure exactly what he was referring to, but guessed that it was what James' letter had referred to. "Just a drop– but warn me next time, will you, Flyfeather?"

Flyfeather rolled his eyes, and set a switch on the syringe, and then flicked the bottle twice with his slender middle finger. Just a drop of blood shot towards the door, before sinking in, leaving not a trace. The door quickly slid open, and Harry and Flyfeather were both stunned to see a gigantic, but completely empty, vault. "You've been gypped, mate," Flyfeather commented.

"Wait, there should be some old artifacts tied to the vault. Help me look for it." Flyfeather agreed, and they set to work. The chamber was at least 800 square meters, with a height of at least five meters, and two support columns, exactly half way between the entrance and the back wall, each spaced two thirds of the width away from opposite sides, so that if lines parallel to the left and right sides had been drawn extending from the columns, the room would've been divided up into three equal parts. Harry took the far left third, and Flyfeather took the far right.

After a few minutes of fruitless searching, Flyfeather yelled to Harry that he had found something. Harry ran over to where Flyfeather was looking, and saw, over a slightly smoothed out portion of the jagged wall, in immaculate script, the word, "Password?" Harry knew instantly. "Er, Flyfeather," he began, "No offense, but could you stand a few feet away?"

Flyfeather told Harry that it wasn't a problem, and walked over to the other side of the chamber, to admire the neo-Corinthian columns.

Harry whispered, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." There was a mighty groaning noise as the words receded, and the smoothed out area smoothly swung open, revealing twenty or so books. Harry motioned for Flyfeather to come back and help him take out the books, and the goblin was happy to do so.

After examining a few of the titles, Flyfeather exclaimed, "Ah! So the Potters _were_ Wardsmasters!" Harry arched an eyebrow at Flyfeather, who took a second to laugh at Harry's slightly silly look, before informing Harry, "It's always been a bit of a puzzle what the Potters did, since they held a varied number of jobs, and they never came out and told anyone what they liked the most. Many speculated that they were Wardsmasters, as the job has fallen to the wayside in this day and age, except as bodyguard work, which mostly Aurors can do. There hasn't been a warding on the size of the Ministry of Magic, or Gringotts in England in centuries. Most warding can be done without extensive knowledge in the art of warding, so there aren't many people who specialize in it anymore– however, after the fiasco in the Ministry, I've heard that they're looking for a Wardsmaster to set up proper wards." Flyfeather grinned at Harry, and flexed his fingers. "Good opportunity, eh? Learn quick."

After the two of them had finished clearing out the books on wards from the hidden vault, Flyfeather turned to leave, and motioned over his shoulder for Harry to join him. On a whim, Harry whispered, "Mischief Managed." and was extraordinarily surprised to see a reddish-brown stone and small book appear in the previously empty vault. He took them out, and showed them to Flyfeather, who didn't recognize the stone, but told him that the reference book looked like one on ancient runes. "Could come in handy with warding," he remarked.

Harry pocketed the stone and reference book, and then realized that it would be nearly impossible to carry all of the books in a practical fashion. "Er, how am I going to carry this stuff?"

Flyfeather replied, slightly surprised, "You know that the Wizarding world barely cares about underaged magic, right? The main problem is if it goes on in front of muggles– they get alerted for that, not for just regular underaged magic. They kind of assume that underaged practitioners of magic might need to be reminded. Just shrink it."

Harry quickly did, and tore off a piece of his excessively large and vibrantly orange shirt and transfigured it into a small bag, in which he put his now bite-sized books.

After following Flyfeather to the cart and bidding him goodbye, Harry left Gringotts. As he left, he noticed that the Dragon was following him again, but decided to once again take no notice of it. Harry spent the rest of the afternoon window shopping, and fervently wishing that he knew more about the wizarding world, as he saw dozens of shops with items that he couldn't even imagine the use of, from small shops advertising "Dream Pillows" to massive warehouses that read, "Golems 'R Us.". Harry spent around an hour in quality quidditch supplies, but didn't even touch anything, knowing that he barely had four galleons to his name, and fearing that he might damage some merchandise, holding him responsible.

Finally, at seven o'clock, Harry made his way back to WWW, just in time to see the Weasleys casting spells to black out the windows of the store. "Hey, you, whatever your name is, do you know the notice-me-not charm?" Fred asked, beckoning him.

Harry shook his head no, and said, "Mort. My name is Mort."

George nodded, and showed Harry the wand motion and incantation for the charm. "It's like the memory charm, except it's kind of the opposite. It makes your mind slide off of an object, instead of the object slide out of your mind. So it's just a quick jab, and, er, counter-clockwise, I think– it goes to the left, anyways– half turn, followed by _Oblivious!_" he explained, casting the spell with the ease of a practice. A thick blue bar shot out towards the upper right hand corner, and a picture of a monkey covering its eyes appeared. "Here, we have to do it to all of the corners for full effect, you try."

Harry mimicked his movements, and wasn't surprised to see that he failed. Fred showed him how he was saying the words too early, and how he shouldn't say the spell until after he had finished moving his wand, and he got it well enough on his second try. It wasn't as thick a bar as George's, and the lines in the picture weren't as well defined, but the twins seemed happy with his progress, and urged him to try the other two. He did, and George finished the spell with, "_So mote it be!_" the pictures all connected themselves with straight red lines, six in all. "It's better with a pentagram, but, as you can see," he gestured towards the flat roof, "Our roof isn't sloped enough for that."

George took a small dagger out of his pocket, and jabbed it into the door. "So that we can notice it in the morning," he explained to Harry. "It's keyed to us, and– oh, shit. Er..." he pulled the dagger out of his pocket, and handed it to Harry. "Go on, just a drop." Harry hesitated for a second, before pricking his finger. A drop of blood fell onto the dagger, and then disappeared. George took it again, and stuck it into the door. "Okay. Now, it's keyed to the three of us. Anyways, now's as good a time as any to discuss business. Where are you staying?"

"Just got in from Canada, don't have a place," Harry said, rushing his words so much that they almost began to slur together.

Fred glanced at his brother, and after a barely hesitant nod, shrugged. "I guess you could stay with us. But that's a cut out of your salary." Harry nodded quickly– he had expected that.

"You name your price," Harry replied, glad to have a place to be staying.

The two of them turned to face Harry, and Fred bit his lip, before offering, "Ten a week."

Harry gave the two of them a look as if they were crazy, and returned, "Twenty-five a month– you both know I'm being generous, since I'll probably sleep on the floor."

George quickly agreed, but charged Harry another five sickles for every meal he shared with them. Harry supposed it was fair, before he realized, "Forget that, I'll cook for you, if you make it twenty, and drop the price on the meals."

Fred gave him a skeptical look. "Can you?"

Harry shrugged. "Sure, since I was five."

George grinned, and gave Harry a saucy wink. "Would you mind being our bitch in a French Maid's outfit?"

Harry rolled his eyes. At least Fred and George were completely the same in this crazy, mixed up universe. "You do realize that I'm titless, right?" he asked, exasperated.

Fred cursed. "Ach, foiled again. That sure puts a kink in our plans to brutally rape you, right George?"

George began to pout, but soon ended the charade. "Alright. And . . . what do you want per hour? Before deductions, of course."

"What would be my job?" Harry inquired, curious as to what went on in a business. "Cleaning up the store?"

"Nah, the Golem gets that. Either helping us design the stuff, customer service, or actually doing the grunt work and making it. Probably some amalgam of all of that."

Harry nodded thoughtfully. "Two Galleons?"

Now it was Fred's turn to look at him as if he was crazy. "More like one, seven."

"One ten," Harry countered.

"Deal," Fred affirmed, reaching out a hand for Harry to shake. Harry did so quickly, and then remembered something he had thought peculiar.

"Golem?" he asked, not remembering anyone mentioning a Golem before.

Fred replied, clearly slightly surprised at Harry's lack of worldly knowledge. "Oh, you know, a magical construct." Harry **did** recognize that, although he couldn't remember them ever being so very prevalent, having gone out of style in the sixteen hundreds or so. That appeared to be one change.

"Oh, right. Uh... does it have a name?"

Fred cleared his throat, as if deeply offended. "**She**, thankyouverymuch, is called Verity. She's also my girlfriend," he bragged, pushing outwards imaginary suspenders smugly.

George gasped, in mock horror. "What would Angelina say to this infidelity?"

Fred rolled his eyes. "Angelina, shmangelina. We both know that Verity is what is **truly** in my heart."

George chuckled at the play on words, before turning back to Harry. "So, we'll pay you for any work you do, regardless of whether it's back at our bachelor pad, or in the store– we'll show you around tomorrow, early in the morning– not many customers, then."

Fred and George both took Harry by the arm, and Fred asked, "Ever side-along apparated before, Mort?" Harry shook his head no, and George shrugged. "Not all that comfortable, it's better by your own volition, but it'll have to do, unless– you're not 16 yet, are you?" he asked, releasing his hold of Harry's left arm.

"Er, no," Harry affirmed.

Fred grabbed hold of his arm again, and started tapping his left foot, at a steady pace. George mirrored him, and after around ten seconds, George muttered under his breath, "One, two, three!" to the rhythm of their feet. On three, Harry had the peculiar sensation of being compressed into the smallest possible size, and then sucked up a tube, before being expelled, whole again. The process couldn't have lasted any more than a second. Harry gasped, and George pounded him on the back.

"Don't die on us, Mort!" Fred cheerfully ordered. "Just a bit of first-time apparation jitters, eh?"

Mort nodded in the affirmative, and took that opportunity to look around himself. Judging by the number 14 on the wall, they were in front of the sole door on the fourteenth floor of a kind of dingy looking flat. Not remembering any mention of wizarding flats, it was probably muggle. "Is this place muggle?" Harry asked?

George gave Harry a kind accusing look. "Don't tell me you believe that stupid shit," he growled, immediately turning from happy-go-lucky twin to defender of muggle rights.

Harry quickly assured George that he wasn't some uppity pureblood, but that he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to work any magic.

Fred and George immediately calmed down, and reassured Harry of the safety of his wand waving. "Nah, we have notice me not charms in every window. They'd have to actually step through the door to pick something up, and we have a muggle aversion ward. Tricky bit of magic there," Fred bragged. "Took me a while to find the right runes."

George pulled a key out of his ear, with a wink to Harry, and unlocked the door. Harry was immediately assaulted by the odors of what smelled like rotting flesh. He wrinkled his nose, and Fred and George cast some sort of odor repelling charms on themselves. "Wouldn't it be better to just vanish the offending item?" Fred shook his head, grinning, and cast the charm on Harry. "It's _Nixod Oratum, _wand motion doesn't really matter," he informed Harry. Harry followed close behind, and wasn't too surprised to see a flat that closely resembled Harry's old room in terms of neatness.

The first room was striped yellow and blue, giving the peculiar impression of coolness and relaxation of the blue, combined with the slightly frenetic neon yellow. The room was completely bare, excluding several boxes in one of the corners opposite the door, which contained what appeared to be scraps of plastic, and the magical materials needed to create the Wheezes. There was a door in the left wall, and Fred led him through that.

Harry rolled his shoulders, in an attempt to relax himself, as he was feeling strangely tense, and Fred showed him the kitchen. "This is where you're sleeping, Bitchboy." The walls were a plain white, and there was a magic stove, little more than a changeable fire-charm with a directional cooling charm blanketing it, on top of a sheet of metal. There was a decent sized refrigerator, which most resembled a refrigerator box with a bunch of cooling charms. It probably was. There was a milk crate, that Harry figured they transfigured when they needed a flat surface.

"A real class establishment, boys," Harry muttered, drawing slightly wider smiles from the twins.

"We try," George boasted. Harry sighed, and lay down on the cold, linoleum floor, ignoring the twins for an instant, to check out how he'd sleep. _Well,_ he thought, _the cupboard was worse, but I'll need a pillow._ He opened his eyes, and stood up. "I'll need a pillow. And not transfigured. I'd prefer a pillow filled with down, not one filled with plastic shavings," he added, when he saw George glancing at the milk crate. "Lend me a fiver, I'll be back before eight," he promised. "Mothers," he added, somewhat belatedly.

George and Fred began to act the part masterfully, dithering and making up fake "bad influences" on "Morty-dearest" but in the end, shelled out ten pounds, and sent Harry on his way.

Harry was in luck, and quickly found a department store. Unfortunately, after checking a few price tags, he realized that both the twins and Harry had grossly underestimated the power of ten pounds, and was forced to return with a heart shaped, dangerously pink pillow that cost four bucks. While he was waiting in line at the store, he took the opportunity to form a question in his mind that would allow Harry to better understand the Weasley twins.

When Harry came back to the flat, the Weasleys were relaxing on a sofa that Harry didn't remember seeing before. He assumed it was conjured, or transfigured. "Why are you so trusting, like, giving me a job on the basis of a note, and letting me into your home?"

George shrugged, not looking away from the girly mag that was occupying nearly all of his attention. Fred opened his eyes, and smiled softly at Harry. "We owe Hera rather a lot, monsieur, for a reason that we're not going to tell you. Hera can tell you if she wishes. Another reason is that you **feel** remarkably like Hera. We both noticed it right after you left. We figure that anyone that similar to a girl with such a worshippable personality has gotta be pretty awesome."

George murmured softly, "That's not the only thing that's worshippable."

Fred gave a lupine, shit-eating grin. "And she's over 15 too, so she's fair game."

Harry felt oddly protective of her, but said nothing. The twins loved her enough, platonically, that they were completely danger-free physically. And if what Harry could remember from was right, then they weren't exactly slouches at defense. Seeing that they were looking for a response from him, he muttered, "Not really my type." Not completely true, of course, but from a more objective standpoint, it might be slightly peculiar to make out with yourself.

Looking up from his magazine, and seeing Harry's new pillow, George grinned. "Nice pillow, Mort," he remarked.

"Apparently, muggle pillows are more in the twenty pound range, Weasley." Harry didn't even bother trying to tell which was which.

Fred stood up, and gestured for Harry to follow him. "We can now continue, since Bitchboy has his love pillow," he announced, in the age-old fashion of the long-winded guide. Harry rolled his eyes again, and followed Fred.

"Here is the kitchen, you may drop your love-pillow here, Bitchboy, and, in this next room, is my brother George's room. A wonderful room, blazing red and yellow, in the style of Van Wailin Von Vandertront Von Violademour.." George's room was filled with Potions, Herbology, and Care of Magical Creatures, sticky notes, from wall to wall, with centerfolds in between. Harry could barely see the wallpaper, but from what he could, it seemed to be predominantly red, with yellow polka dots. There was a humongous bed in the middle of the room, probably three or four times the size of Harry's old bed, and on the left wall, the centerfolds and notes were interrupted by a large bookcase, filled with old textbooks.

After seeing that Harry was finished looking, Fred led him into the next room. "This is the bathroom. This is the bath, and this is the porcelain god." The porcelain god could clearly be more aptly named the plastic god, but Harry said nothing. There was a door on the left wall of the bathroom, and Fred led Harry through that. The floor was littered with clothes, presumably dirty ones, and the walls were lined with clothes hangers, and clothes. "We get dressed here," Fred informed Harry. "Unless you want to see a load of Weasley ass, don't come in here between six-thirty and seven."

They exited the room again, and continued through the door opposite the one to George's room. Harry could immediately tell that this room was Fred's, even though it seemed to be the polar opposite of George's. "My room, an austere grey, in the famous . . . uh . . . Lee Nadrozhski style." The walls were completely grey, as Fred has stated. However, this was simple to see, as Fred seemed to have pasted all of his post-it notes to the ceiling. With a little closer inspection, it was easy to see that they were even distributed between Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, and Charms. Fred had a much smaller bed, and a much larger book case, which was filled mostly with advanced reading on the subjects that he had post-it notes on. Harry had never really thought of Fred as an intellectual, and was more than slightly impressed.

"What stuff is transfigured? What's not?" Harry asked, not having ever really been very familiar with a wizarding household. Whenever he was at the Burrow, he hadn't really understood the limits of transfiguration, and the different connotations associated with transfigured items versus bought ones.

"Excellent question, young one!" Fred exclaimed, mock-serious. "Well, pretty much nothing here is transfigured. Any and all transfiguring, we do in the, ah, "Great Hall," like with our couches, and we always revert it when we're done." He buffed his finger against his blue t-shirt, and inspected his fingernails, clearly affecting a snooty persona. "The great House Weasley has always, somewhat,_disdained_ the use of transfiguration, on the grounds that it was beneath us. Another point was that Percy was the last Weasley to even pass the Transfiguration exam, although," and he bent over to Harry's shoulder, in order to stage whisper into his ear, "We fear for our youngest brother, Mr. Donald Weasley."

Fred shook his head gravely. "Ah, yes. Spending far too much time with that Transfiguration whiz-kid, your, ah, our, mutual, benefactress. Our sister has confided her fears that he might get an E on his OWLs, although, obviously, we're taking steps against that. We've been speaking with Professor Tofty, mostly by way of generous gifts of Skiving Snackboxes– you know, to get away from the work of it all, but we don't think he's biting."

_Hmm, a change_, Harry thought. He knew that Transfiguration had been one of his weaker subjects, and decided to dig a little deeper. Following Fred out of his room and back to the so-called Great Hall, Harry dropped his own question. "I only met said whiz-kid a little while back– she likes Transfiguration? Anything else?" Harry couldn't really imagine being skilled at Transfiguration, and took a few seconds to daydream about turning air into emeralds, before being dragged back into reality by Fred's response. "Not too familiar with Hera? But she gives you a bloody job? That's kind of weird. . . . Er, Potions, got that from her mum, I think, and–"

"Potions?" Harry interrupted. That was a _definite_ change.

"Well, apparently Snape, the dipshit Potions Professor really likes her–" George joined in. "Started tutoring her in first year, and Robby, our youngest brother–"

George was abruptly cut off by Fred, who reminded, "His name's Arnold! Get it right!"

George rolled his eyes, and continued, "Ron, our youngest brother, told us that she became kind of obsessed with it in fourth year, because she was in some crazy mad tournament."

Harry tried to imagine how potions could've helped him, but was clueless. He resolved to ask her about it next he saw her. Then Harry realized that there was no guarantee that he'd see her again, and he resolved to figure that how to arrange that. He felt somehow drawn to her, like along with protect her, he should become friends with her, since she almost _felt_, in an indescribable way, like she was an old friend– and not only an old friend, the oldest friend. _A bosom buddy_, he mused. Suddenly, he backtracked in his mind. _Protect her? Where did that come from?_ He shook it off as a slightly deluded peculiarity, an offshoot of his 'Protector Complex', and forgot about it.

George had finished looking over his girly mag, and banished it to his room, before standing up. "Oh, right, and she became Chaser for Gryffindor last year."

_Last year? There weren't any chaser positions open last year._ "Oh? Did someone graduate?" Harry asked, feigning ignorance. _It wouldn't look good if I knew that Katie, Alicia and Angelina, better play it safe. _

"Actually, no," Fred responded. "Leesh was told that she couldn't be on the team if she didn't up her grades, and after she started getting O's, she started liking it."

George mimed a tear running down his face with his finger, and sobbed, "She's gone over to the dark side!" He sniffed loudly, and pretended to wipe his eyes. "Even joined Charms club! And, er, a Defense class, too."

Fred smiled lazily at George. "Well, we did too."

Harry looked at them as incredulously as he could. "You? Extra work? That's sounds slightly out of character . . . " he mused.

"Well, it was actually arranged by Dumbledore. He hired an Auror by the name of Shacklebolt– we call him Shack. Huge black man, genius Auror, could curse you into next week if he felt like it. He mostly trained Hera, though she wasn't too receptive. Not really a defense type, really. We learned a bit too."

So Hera didn't have the DADA know-how to push Dumbledore's army through by herself. It would be interesting if Dumbledore decided to keep Shacklebolt– Harry imagined how much he could learn, and practically drooled. Realizing that he'd sound like a poor guest if he didn't inquire as to how his hosts had done in school, he hazarded a guess. "George– Potions, Herbology, and Magical Creatures, Fred– Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and Charms?"

George looked fairly surprised, and looked askance at Fred, who simply asked back to Harry, "It was the post-it notes that clued you in, right?"

Harry simply nodded, and George relaxed. "Good, you're not a bloody stalker," he mumbled. Harry snorted.

Fred returned, "And you?"

"Ah, Defense and Charms, mostly."

Fred's eyes lit up, and he shared a smile with George. "That's wicked!" he breathed. "We were just lamenting our inability to cast a decent shield charm, since our last teacher kind of sucked. Knew we'd fail that course, but we had to take it if we wanted to stay in Hogwarts– turned out that we didn't need it, but, oh well."

Harry remembered Fred and George casting shield charms very capably right before Malfoy and Umbridge had crashed the club, and was somewhat glad to know that he seemed to be a better teacher than an Auror. "Uh, sure, I can show you how to now." He got out his wand, and jabbed it forward, muttering, "_Protego!_" an opaque blue shield instantly appeared out of Harry's wand, slightly wider than two feet across, and six feet long.

George let out a low, and long whistle. "Looks almost exactly like Shack's."

"'Cept his was larger," Fred added, clearly also impressed. "You'll have to show us how to do it tomorrow, though. Both of us have always been a bit thick with Defense, and we both have stuff to do. I have to charm some more fireworks, and George has to brew some more Snackboxes."

George looked at Fred in surprise. "I do?" He asked, "Which ones?"

Fred grinned malevolently as George, and informed him, "All of them." George cursed, and went over to the boxes, presumably to sift out his materials. Fred turned to Harry, and smiling ruefully, told him, "Sorry Mort, we're both really busy tonight. We'll have to show you the tricks of the trade another night."

Harry shrugged, figuring that he could use the time to investigate the Potter books and heirloom. "That's fine," he replied.

Harry went into his makeshift room, and after transfiguring the milk crate into a plastic table, and the pillow into an extremely soft chair, extracted his books from his pocket, and looked over them. Most of them, twenty-one out of twenty-five, were essays by his ancestors about warding, and nearly all of it went really far over his head, but it turned out that three of them were a series about actually learning how to ward. He started reading the first book, and although at first the archaic English was slightly difficult to figure out, he began to understand the simple exercises that the book outlined. He did them all fairly quickly, tying silencing, shielding, and jinxing charms to items permanently, which was much the same as regular charms, except with a special flick of the wand and a little extra magic.

Harry decided that the book must be mostly preparation for actually learning how to ward, since the exercises were all explained very simplistically, like for a nine-year-old. Harry skimmed through the book, just doing the exercises, and got halfway through the book, and how to make a motion sensor-esque charm when Fred walked in, demanding food. Harry took a second to make Fred a grilled cheese, and did the same when George practically crawled in, groaning.

In fact, George _was_crawling. He groaned, "Brains . . . " and Harry, rolling his eyes, sent a stinging hex his way. "Definitely a Defense type", he muttered, standing up and rubbing his stung side.

Harry made himself a grilled cheese, finishing off the cheese. Looking around to see if there was any alternative cheese in the make-shift pantry above the 'refrigerator', Harry found a disgusting looking, and definitely ancient, slab of roast beef. It was infested with maggots, and Harry took the liberty of vanishing it. After munching on their sandwiches in silence, Fred and George went off to bed, and Harry untransfigured the table and chair, and rested his head on the pillow, looking up at the cracking ceiling. It wasn't heaven, but Harry was definitely happier now. There was another 'Chosen One', who was probably better equipped to fight Voldemort. _Better to transfigure him into a rabbit than to try to sting his side,_ Harry thought. _Maybe even poison him. She can take care of it. _Feeling a burden off of his shoulders, Harry began to doze off. Almost in the land of the Sandman, Harry's thoughts were, _It's good to be in a home, even if it's only temporary._

Several seconds later, there was a scratching on the door, jerking Harry out of near-sleep.

He sleepily walked out of the Kitchen, and opened the door, supposing that it wasn't too peculiar to have a late night visitor, seeing as it was only nine-thirty, although after his work, it felt like two in the morning. However, Harry was completely unprepared to see a small, bronze dragon drop a small black box onto the ground. Harry cursed. This was far too eventful for a bloody Thursday.


	3. Chapter 3

Harry woke the next morning, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. Instantly, he remembered everything about the alternate reality, his Gringotts vault, and the Potter ring. Sighing, he decided that it was necessary to deal with it. He took the box, and using the sink as a mirror, he gingerly pulled the ring out of the box, and slipped it onto his finger. He didn't feel any different after donning it, but mindful that Hera hadn't grasped that she was different after putting hers on, he looked carefully in the sink. He still couldn't see a difference, and decided that it was because he was already a Potter.

Harry briefly chided himself for not thinking of that before, before returning to his bed, and going over some more of the simple exercises that the book described. He was getting steadily better at infusing items with spells, especially with hexes, and by the time Fred and George told him he could use their shower, he could at least use curses as strong as _stupefy_ as well as he could without the intermediary. After showering, he threw together some pancakes for the starving brothers, who were delighted with his continued excellent performance in cooking.

After swallowing the last of his fourth pancake, George slapped his stomach, and informed Harry, "On a rating of one to ten, where one is not so great, and ten is totally excellent, this scores a nine point five!" Harry smirked and laughed, digging into his third pancake.

After they had finished breakfast, by seven fourty-five, Fred and George apparated Harry to the store again, and after activating Verity, who did, in fact, look remarkably like a human, set to showing Harry what his job would be. "Well, we really only need one of us to man the shop in the mornings, so Fred can show you the ropes on making items."

Fred nodded to George, and suddenly completely serious, asked him, "Are the extendable ears running low?"

George nodded back, and added, "Canary Creams and Skiving Snackboxes too, but I think that those are a little finicky for him to be trying immediately."

Fred gave one last nod, and led Harry back to the store room, which was riddled with brown cardboard boxes on one end of it, and neatly stacked green, red, and blue ones on the other end. There were two rough wooden worktables in the middle of it all, each with a knife, pair of scissors, a few books, and a chair. "You can work at George's, until we make a third for you," Fred told him, waving him towards the desk farthest from the entrance. "Now, you take this regular old magical silly putty from Zonko's, and infuse it with a listening and receiving charm. It's really quite simple. The incantation for the listening charm is _orios_, and the receiving one is _audios_. You have to make sure that it works for every one, so we set up a wireless radio here, on the lowest audio sound, and if you can hear it from across the room using it, then it works.

"The movements are pretty simple too–for _Orios_, hold your wand with your middle three fingers, pinky and thumb outstretched, and just move your hand from palm down to palm up, so that your pinky is moving in. "The movement for _Audios_ is the same but backwards. Got it?"

Harry nodded, and Fred smiled. "Okay, I'm going to go over here and work on some of our relatively edible products. We'll need a hundred of the extendable ears, so just tell me when you finish your quota."

Harry started work, and was surprised by how little effort it took to use the listening and receiving charm on the pieces of putty. He was finishing up his tenth, when Fred came over, and asked, "How's it going?"

Harry smiled, and nodded. "Great! I've already got ten done," he said, pointing towards them with pride.

Fred frowned. "In ten minutes? Let me see them." He looked at a few of them, before sighing. "Fuck. I must've forgotten to tell you about the permanence rune."

Harry looked at him quizzically, and Fred leaned over onto Harry's desk. "See, in order to prevent the charm from wearing off after a few minutes, which is what most of these are doing, you need to give it a permanence rune. There are other ways, but this is the easiest of them." Taking a quill, he dipped it in the inkpot in the corner of the desk, and drew a blood-red eight on the desk. "This is the sigil you're going to need," he told Harry. "Most of it is easy, but you'll need to push some magic through your quill in order to get the cow blood to touch itself again, for both times, the crossover and the last touching."

Harry nodded, and after recasting and drawing the rune on several of them, he began to get the idea, starting the line from the crossing, so that he could simply keep on pushing the magic for a few milliseconds, rather than start and stop twice. He didn't quite regain his previous speed, and he began to feel a bit of exhaustion after the first hour had passed and fifty of the little stringy 'ears' had been completed. He forced his way through the last of the batch, and was completely beat by ten o'clock, when he finished. He told Fred that he was finished, and Fred nodded with approval and sent him off to the main room, to help George sell the products.

The first few minutes were relatively slow, but by eleven, sales had picked up considerably. Most of the buyers were school aged, and surprisingly enough, to Harry at least, tended towards the older end of the spectrum than the younger. He nearly shat himself when he realized that Katie was frankly inquiring as to the effectiveness of Fred and George's trick wands. He quickly recovered, however, and demonstrated their effectiveness quite nicely for her, convincing her to buy a few.

At three o'clock, as things finally began to slow down again, Fred relieved him, ordering him to get himself some lunch. Harry swung by Gringotts, and managed to convince Flyfeather to help him figure out a good place to get lunch, as well as in order to garner some advice. They eventually settled on a pretty nice French place, with the somewhat peculiar decor of numerous magical pictures of frogs swimming around. Harry ordered a relatively inexpensive steak frites and Flyfeather got a salad.

"Tell me about yourself, Flyfeather," Harry asked, between bites of the complimentary bread.

Flyfeather reclined in his chair, and rolled his shoulders, he too partaking of the bread. After dipping it in the mildly seasoned olive oil, he laid it to rest on his small plate, and gave Harry a grin. "Well, the Gringotts thing is really only a summer job. I'm going back to school in September."

Harry raised his eyebrows, and nearly choked on his bread. "School? I could've sworn you were older than that!"

Putting down the bit of bread that he hadn't bitten into, he scowled at Harry. "What, disappointed to be eating with someone who's not your peer?" he asked, moderately defensively.

Harry wiped his hands on his napkin, and shook his head. "No, I'm still in school myself, I just could've sworn that–"

It was suddenly Flyfeather's turn to choke on his bread. "You're still in school? But you're just as tall as many of the other heads of families!"

"Yes, well, Humans grow in spurts. Anyway, I could've sworn that you were older than school aged, unless your school lasts longer than ours."

"Well, we goblins usually live to be around a hundred, and our school lasts for eight years. I'm going to be going into my seventh year next year, I'm sixteen."

"Weird. Humans have practically the same life span, although Nicholas Flamel lived for over six hundred years," Harry began.

"He was the guy with the Philosopher's Stone, right?" Flyfeather interrupted.

Harry nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah. And Dumbledore is something like 160 now."

"Dumbledore?" Flyfeather inquired, curious.

Harry was moderately taken aback. Either Dumbledore was much less famous in this world, goblins didn't really keep up with Human current events, or Harry had always been given a skewed perspective of Dumbledore's position of power. "Er, yeah, he's the Headmaster of the school I go to."

"Have you gone to your school for long?" Flyfeather asked before sipping his Sprite. An illusory fairy popped out of his nose as he burped, and landed on his shoulder, but he ignored it.

Harry quickly backpedaled, remembering his story. "Er, well, to be fair, I'm only applying to it. I haven't been there before, I used to live in Canada, and stuff."

"Well, I've told you my age, but you haven't volunteered yours," he pointed out as the waiter brought them their food.

Harry rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, trying to buy time before he could pick an age. "Er, well, I mean, we were discussing the ages of old wizards–" he mumbled, before deciding that if he wanted to get his full Hogwarts schooling in, he'd need to be the same age. "I'm fifteen, anyways," he announced. "I'll turn sixteen at the end of July," he added.

"Wicked!" Flyfeather said, smiling. "I'm sorry, I've never been able to tell the difference between young and old humans, or even male or female ones. I read about different races of Humans, like Asian, Europeans, and Africans, but I don't really know anything else."

Harry decided that it was moderately surreal, discussing differing human physiology to a goblin over slightly too crisp fries, and rare steak in a cheap bistro. "Well, one of the main differences are that female breasts become much more pronounced during puberty, so many of the taller, or older, people, you'll be able to tell their sex through whether their breasts are enlarged or not. You should probably know that having larger breasts is generally considered more sexually attractive in humans. I've even heard of people taking having bits of silicon based materials implanted in their breasts to make them larger, or taking breast 'enhancing' potions."

"Really!" Flyfeather exclaimed, fascinated. "Bizarre," he whispered. "No offense, of course," he quickly added, realizing that he was in the company of a human. Harry quickly assured him that none was taken, and Flyfeather asked, "So, judging by your lack of breasts, can I assume that you're not a woman? Weird, I had always assumed that that was where humans stored their fat."

Harry nodded. "No, that's in the gut," he replied, pounding his stomach. "I'm 100 man. And you?" he asked, suddenly considering that, if he had no idea of how to differentiate between men and women that Goblin women might not have similar breasts.

Flyfeather snorted. "No, not at all. Goblin women have larger eyebrows and lips than goblin men, and are often smaller, although myself as well as many other people my age are mistaken for women, since we're not finished growing, which I gather Humans do at a younger age?" he asked.

"Finish growing?" Harry asked. At Flyfeather's nod, he thought for a second, before nodding. "Yeah, I'm almost completely finished growing, although I probably won't finish until I'm around twenty. There are a few major spurts of growth, which are when I'm really young, and early in the teenaged years."

Flyfeather nodded at Harry. "We don't finish growing until we're 30, and we grow pretty steadily, without any major growths except in the womb."

"Sounds less awkward," Harry commented. "Adolescence, the teenaged years of humans are known as awkward points. If my parents were still alive, I'd probably be arguing with them about doing my chores, and trying to adjust to longer limbs and increased executive functions."

Flyfeather was taken aback by Harry's comment. "Your parents are dead?" he said aghast.

Harry nodded solemnly. "A week ago, they didn't come home after a week, when they were supposed to be back in two days, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that they're dead." He sighed, wishing he was back in what he still considered the _real_ world, so that he wouldn't need all of these convoluted lies. "This has always been the contingency plan if they didn't return from one of their expeditions. I'll mourn them when I have time."

Flyfeather was once again horrified. "I . . . do you need lodgings? My parents' house wasn't built for humans, but I'm sure that we could accommodate you. Well . . . that's horrible."

Harry nodded, and swallowed some more crunchy fries. "So, back to less . . . horrible thoughts, Feather," he suggested. "Larger eyebrows . . ." he thought back to his previous encounters with goblins, and sat slack jawed, staring Flyfeather, his fork nearly to his mouth. "Do you know a goblin named Griphook?" he asked his friend urgently.

Flyfeather grinned, almost ferally. "Now that is one _fine_ lady," he exclaimed. "The things I would eat out her ass . . ." he said wishfully.

"Ugh!" Harry exclaimed, laughing. "That is a completely vulgar statement!"

"So is that you wouldn't mind banging a veela on the bathroom floor, but it's true!" Flyfeather quickly countered.

"Touché," Harry admitted, taking another bite of the steak. "By the way, do you want any of this steak?" he asked, pushing his plate towards Flyfeather.

Flyfeather politely declined with a shake of his head. "Sorry, I'm a vegetarian," he informed Harry.

"Really!" Harry exclaimed, again surprised. "For what reasons?" he inquired. "Religious? Political? Health? Softie?"

Flyfeather shrugged sheepishly. "Bleeding heart, I gotta say."

They sat for a few minutes, picking at their food, sharing the comfortable silence that friends do. Harry looked at his watch, and asked, "Do you have time left? Or do you need to get back to your job?"

Flyfeather pulled up his sleeve, and glanced at the gigantic chronometer that encompassed his entire forearm. "Eh . . . no, I still have twenty minutes. Why?" he asked, motioning for the waiter to bring the check.

Harry smiled, leaned a little closer to Flyfeather, and whispered, "This might sound a bit unbelievable," he began, "but I was cursed with this face and body, and I don't think I can get rid of it. However, I _need_ to get rid of _this_," he said, pushing his bangs away from his forehead, revealing his scar. Seeing Flyfeather's look of incomprehension, he explained, "There's a very famous witch with a scar that's exactly the same. In fact, I look nearly exactly her, except with masculine features. I could be her twin."

Flyfeather stroked his chin for a few seconds before his eyes lit up. "Oh! Hera Potter!" he exclaimed. "We learned about her in current events class." He took a long look at Harry, and his scar, before grinning, and joking, "So does that make you Zeus Potter?"

Harry shook his head, smiling wryly before replying, "No, Harry Potter." Flyfeather snorted, and laughed. "So," he asked, leaning in again, "Do you know where I can get a disguise?"

Flyfeather thought for a second, before asking, "You want a sort of permanent one?" At Harry's nod, he suggested, "Well, you can get costumes at Cos-zard, down the street."

Harry shrugged. "Sounds good. Can you show me? I've heard of it, but never actually visited the place."

"Eh, Diagon Alley is pretty famous in Canada, sounds like," Flyfeather noted.

Harry realized his slip of the tongue, and immediately told him, "Well, my parents were both British, so they would reminisce about the Alley."

Flyfeather and Harry both threw down a galleon for their meal, and walked off towards Cos-zard. Harry had a wonderful time looking through the costumes, which he was quite surprised to see he had met many of. "Viktor Krum, Minister Fudge, Headmaster Dumbledore, Head of DMLE Amelia Bones, Bellatrix Lestrange, Antonin Dolohov, Bartemius Crouch, and . . . Hera Potter!" he exclaimed to Flyfeather. "Those are the people I've . . ." remembering again that he had only been in Britain for a few days, he amended, "Those are the people I've heard of before."

"Hey, Mort, here's you!" Flyfeather exclaimed, holding up a cloak and mask with a floating picture of him above it.

"What?" Harry exclaimed, rushing over to look at it. It wasn't perfect in all respects, and he looked a little older now than what the costume had, but it was a pretty good resemblance. Intrigued, after trying on the Viktor Krum one, and taking off his family ring, he got the store's owner to come over, and explain the costume to them.

"Er, well, you know, there were a bunch of rumours that someone had seen a male copy of Hera Potter. It was suggested that he was, you know, Hera Potter's twin brother, who _actually_ killed Lord Voldemort, but Dumbledore," he said, pointing to the headmaster's costume, "Said that he had no idea what the source saw, but that it was definitely Hera who killed Voldemort. So, to get a bit of profit out of all of that buzz, we made this costume. It still sells like hot cakes."

Harry nodded, and decided to buy it, on a whim. "So," Flyfeather said, a grin spread across his face, "was the mysterious male Potter you?"

Harry snorted. "I've only had this face a few days, so I greatly doubt it."

"That's fair," Flyfeather said with a chuckle. "So, are you going to take the Krum costume?" he asked.

Harry nodded. "Yeah. I can use the mask without the cloak, if I want to."

They went up to the cash register, and Harry was surprised that the costumes came out to three galleons, after tax. "Well, I have the money," he muttered to Flyfeather, "But I'll be broke for the rest of the day."

Flyfeather nodded, and spotted him the cash. "You can pay me back on Monday," he assured Harry. "I'll be good, my dad is pretty high up in the goblin government, and is generally regarded as one of the strongest, most resourceful and brightest people, so I don't even really need the cash from this summer job," he sighed. "It's nice, but I'm continually in my father's shadow. It's always, 'Well, at the age of ten, Ragnok could lift a tree with one finger, and got perfect scores on all of his tests!'. I mean, dad doesn't judge me, but I always feel like I'm failing him whenever I only do _okay_ in school." he sighed, before closing his eyes, and apologizing to Harry. "I'm sorry for that rant, it was a little too much, considering I've only known you for a few days."

Harry shook his head. "No, it's fine, I can understand the need to dump your concerns and worries on someone. I have no problem being your, ah, emotional trash can."

Flyfeather laughed, a little mirthlessly, before glancing again at his gigantic timepiece, and immediately informed Harry that he had to be going, and ran off. Harry returned to the Weasleys', and Fred immediately got him back on helping customers, while he ran off to finish preparing the canary creams. Harry worked just helping out customers until ten o'clock, when they finally closed. Apparently, Friday had ended up being successful enough that they had decided to keep it open three extra hours.

"So, Mr. Saignant," Fred drawled as they went through the same closing procedure of the night before, with Harry casting the notice-me-not charm, "How much do we owe you?"

Doing some quick math in his head, he said slowly, "Er . . . thirteen galleons and a hundred and thirty sickles." Fred and George nodded slowly. "Makes sense. So . . . twenty galleons and . . . fuck it, let's just make it twenty one galleons, I don't feel like doing the math."

They forked over the Galleons, which Harry promptly stuck in his pocket. "Thanks," Harry muttered, before asking Fred, "Is there a weaker version of the notice-me-not charm, so that you'll be lost in a crowd, but can be found if someone is looking for you?"

Fred nodded slowly. "Uh, yeah, I think it's the same motion with _Oblivious Minor_ or something."

Harry nodded, and Fred and George apparated him back to their apartment. "By the way," he said upon getting back there, "I decided while out at lunch that I needed a change, so I, er, got a new face," he announced, pulling out his Viktor Krum mask, and putting it on.

"Interesting, Mr. Saignant," George commented, looking at him appraisingly. "You look like a cross between your old face and Viktor Krum."

Harry, smiled, knowing that it was Viktor's smile, and not his smile that crossed his face, and nodded. "That was the effect I was going for," he told them. He realized that his hypothesis that the Potter ring would affect him regardless of what face he wore was correct, and felt a great deal of satisfaction at his accurate prediction. He had a feeling that he was finally getting the hang of magic, after five years of it.

"You'll be beating off the ladies with a stick, I'm sure," Fred assured him absently, before announcing, "Don't bother making dinner, I'm off to bed. More pancakes in the morning?" he asked hopefully.

"Sure. Berries?" Harry asked.

Fred and George had a quick Rock Paper Scissors match, which Fred won. "Blueberries," George told Harry reluctantly. "They're in the Freezer." With that, the two of them stumped off to bed, exhausted by their long days. Harry tried to figure out a little more of the text from his vault, but beyond that wards used the permanence charm that he had practiced with, he couldn't discern anything, and he fell to sleep without going any more of the exercises.

Fred and George woke him up at seven again, and ordered him to prepare breakfast for them. He made some pancakes, and while Fred and George ate, he showered. At seven forty-five, he came out of the shower again, pocketed five pancakes, and was apparated by Fred and George to the store. Saturday was an extremely busy day, and Harry helped Fred man the shop until Helen came in at ten thirty, the thirty-something woman who worked with them over the weekends. Since she worked selling the products, Harry could move back to work with George in the back room while Fred and her sold the supplies.

"See, we're working on brewing a few different potions in here, mostly ones that we coat our supplies in, and love potions. See, this one, it smells like pumpkins," George explained, shoving a vial under Harry's nose, "This creates infatuation for a nice hour of snogging. That one sells great with the ladies. This one, it smells like a cross between strawberries and peaches, a very mild aphrodisiac." Once again, he wafted some of the scent up to Harry's nose. Harry took note of it, figuring that it could come in handy later, being able to detect love potions. "Oh, and this is our best seller, even though it costs ten galleons a vial–makes someone more open to loving you for a day. Whatever progress you make that day doesn't wear off, but you have to blood work for the affection. It smells like whatever you associate with love." This time, he simply handed Harry the vial. Ironically, it was the smell of sweat, blood, and debris that he had come to associate with spellfire. He felt a great longing well up in his stomach, and was surprised to realize that he really did associate spellfire with love.

"How much does it cost to make each of these potions?" Harry asked.

"For the first two, divide the price by five, but for the last one, it costs no more than eight sickles," George proudly instructed him.

"No," Harry denied, incredulous. "Does it at least take great skill in brewing, or time?"

"Not at all," George proclaimed proudly. "Well, it's supposed to contain many rare ingredients, but I've found that it works just as well if I simply cut the catnip in a certain pattern with a diamond blade. It was bloody expensive, but considering how much I save on each potion, well worth it." He rolled his shoulder back, and reclined in his chair. "In fact, it's so easy that this is what we're going to start you on brewing _this _potion. Now, I've found that it's much simpler to just organize all of the ingredients beforehand. I discussed it with Snape, my potions teacher a few years ago, and he completely agreed with me. He said it allowed for less error, but said that if he wanted to do any of the more enjoyable potions with the class, the students had to start brewing as soon as the class started, even with a double period."

Harry was surprised at this–_Is Snape a nice guy in this version of reality?_ He wondered. _I don't remember him having anything except contempt for the Weasleys_. He said nothing, deciding that it could blow his cover if he seemed too knowledgeable about Snape's tendencies.

George carefully took him through the procedures of brewing the potion, and set Harry to it. He was rather more pleased with this method of Potion brewing, as it rather reminded him of cooking, since he didn't need to really think about anything other than preparing ingredients correctly, since the cauldron had previously been programmed to dump in the ingredients in the proper way, and to stir itself.

He was relaxing, after having finished mixing Newt's eyes with the catnip with his mortar and pestle, when Fred popped in. "Mort, c'mere," he yelled unnecessarily.

Harry stood up, closing his book. "Yes, boss?" he queried, slightly curious.

"You've got a visitor, and it looks like you're going to be partying all night. Here are four trick wands, and two headless hats, and, ah, here, forty galleons and a hundred pounds. Go publicize our crap and you'll make a bit more cash." He pushed Harry towards the door to the main part of the shop, while George looked on, amused.

"I . . . wait, what? How do you know?" he asked, clearly walking more slowly than Fred would like, as Fred pushed him harder. Fred stopped for a second, shoved the items into Harry's robe pockets, and resumed pushing him. "Your visitor is a girl who was on my Quidditch team at Hogwarts–Katie's renowned for her social life. Go get 'em, tiger!" he whispered into Harry's ear before slapping him on the arse on his way out.

Harry couldn't really remember any rumours of her being a wild party-goer, but supposed that he hadn't really paid attention to the latest gossip if it didn't involve him, or it could even be a change from his world to this one, and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly as he stood in front of an appraising Katie.

"You looked different yesterday," she commented.

"Er, yeah, it was a disguise that I had assumed. Can't be too safe, with everything going on, you know," he lied, continuing to formulate stories in his head.

"Okay," she said, shrugging. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Uh, I'm Brian Wilson," he informed her as nonchalantly as possible.

She smirked, and looked at him through her bangs. "Nice. By the way, do want to be my friend?" she asked abruptly;

_Definitely not the Katie I knew_, he thought absently. "Um . . . okay," he said nervously.

She immediately smiled brightly. "Wonderful! I was just about to go tea with some friends, do you want to come?" she asked.

Surprised by Fred and George's prescience, he acquiesced to her request, and followed her out of the building. He was surprised by how many social events happened over the summer, as he hopped from tea with the Quidditch team, which was the same lineup as in his world, except that instead of Ron as keeper, it was Cormac McLaggen, and instead of him as Seeker, it was one of Katie's year mates, called Karen, to a party at the house of a hufflepuff one year Harry's senior's house. Harry re-met many of his old friends from Hogwarts, like Angelina, and Dean, who was apparently a shameless womanizer, and was slightly angered when he realized that he could have partied like this if he hadn't been cooped up in his house all summer by Dumbledore last year.

However, he quickly forgot that, as he made his lies more solid and believable. It was like he was an actor, and his mask, ring, and various items from WWW were just props to enable him to construct the Brian Wilson persona. He was slightly dismayed at how proficient he was getting at building a fake person, and made a mental note to get his faces and personas straight, so as not to confuse them, or let anyone else confuse them. He would keep them secret, keep them safe. They were his most valuable possessions.

He begged off from the current party, briefly citing the necessity to relieve himself, and went into the bathroom, before applying a sticking charm to his mask, and unzipping his pants. He considered his options for a few minutes, and how to execute each possibility, before flushing the toilet and noisily re-buttoning his pants. One could never be too careful.


	4. Chapter 4

Over the next few weeks, Harry explained the finer points of Defense Against the Dark Arts to the Weasley twins, enabling them to develop one of their best selling product lines, one that consisted of General Shield Paraphernalia, or ParaShield for short. It constantly generated a trip ward six feet around it at all times, that when tripped by a jinx, would put a Protego up that would last for an hour if it wasn't shattered before that. They sold multitudinous versions of it, from rings to hats to gloves, and they sold like hot cakes as the Ministry built up the Voldemort scare, in an attempt to convince the populace to forget that they had denied it for so long in their fright.

It had been a sort of awkward conversation when he had tried to explain to Fred and George exactly why he didn't really feel like telling people his "real" name, as they hadn't believed him that he was valuable enough to the cause against Voldemort that he hadn't wanted to reveal his real name of Mortimer Saignant. In the end, he had had to tell them that he was a special operative sent from the United States in order to infiltrate the magical community before they would accept that even if they didn't believe him, they wouldn't be getting a better answer.

It had been a sort of awkward conversation when he had tried to explain to himself exactly why he didn't really feel like telling people his _real_ name, and how he had managed to come up with apparently believable lies so quickly. In the end, he had decided that it was because of the sheer necessity of the situation, and the necessity of the situation had appeared from the fact that he had needed a way out from his stress-filled environment, and a world in which there was an alternate him to pick up the slack was far too inviting for him to ruin it.

He had briefly entertained the idea that this entire world was simply a figment of his imagination, but decided that that was ridiculous on the grounds that dreams lasted only as long as the sleep, and that he would have had to be sleeping for a ridiculously long period of time, and he hadn't had any of the usual symptoms of syncope, which he considered would be the only way that he could become asleep while walking. He also doubted that his mind was innovative enough to come up with the stuff that Fred and George did every day.

Harry spent the galleons that he earned from working with Fred and George in several different ways. He used part of them on lunch with Flyfeather, which they had made into a daily thing, except on weekends, when Flyfeather had the day off, and Harry party-hopped with Katie. Through Flyfeather, Harry began to learn Gobbledegook insults, and useless phrases like, "Your bum is on the man," from which, like adolescents, they derived great entertainment. Through Katie, Harry made many connections that he had never formed in the previous world, with whom he had never met. On the rare days that were Bank Holidays for goblins, Harry perused the Wards section of one of the many bookstores on Diagon Alley. Another part, he bought himself necessities that had been left behind in his own world, like clothes and various toiletries. Another part of the galleons, he saved up, and for the rest of it, he rented an owl in order to mail Hera.

They had started an interesting correspondence, where Harry sent her materials, and she responded with descriptions of how she had used them against Dudley, or tailored them to be more effective, and Harry told her about his work with Fred and George, and his lunches with Flyfeather. He had considered telling her about the various parties that he had gone to, but had decided that it would be a painful reminder of everything she couldn't do as long as she was trapped in Surrey. Besides, he didn't need to tell her everything that went on in his life, it was enough that he would be there for his other-self whenever she needed him, he had concluded. As it was, they each lived vicariously through each other, and had a great time of it. It was an odd state of affairs, the double–blind over everyone except the Weasleys and Flyfeather, and the triple–blind over everyone save himself.

Harry slowly but steadily worked through the books that he had retrieved from the Potter Vault, and thought that he would be ready to do serious warding by Christmas, considering the rate that he was going at the moment, and assuming that he would have even less time during school, which he was in the middle of making plans to attend.

Harry was waiting for the ink to dry on his missive to the Headmaster, requesting a scholarship to Hogwarts, when a plain brown owl swooped in, dropped off a familiar vanilla coloured envelope with pale green writing, and flew off again. He picked it up warily, almost afraid that it wasn't real, and in a way wondering who it would be addressed to. The envelope was strangely heavy, and was addressed to_Whomever_,_at__Weasley HQ,2, London._ Surprised, he ripped it open, revealing many galleons, and a brief letter that simply read:

_Be at Platform 9 and 3/4 on September 1__st__. Your list of necessary books and supplies is included, as are funds. Madame Malkins can be trusted, and is holding your invisibility cloak. __**Do not under any circumstances talk to anyone about anything in that store who is not Madame Malkins.**_

_Anno Domini_

_PS: Include your name, we need it for your schedules.__You must take NEWT Defense and NEWT Potions._

The end of the letter was written intensely, almost furiously, and Harry noticed that nearly every sentence was written in the imperative form. Judging by the initials AD, and the distinctively loopy handwriting, Anno Domini was Professor Dumbledore. It was a little shocking that he was so commanding, which was such a complete change from who he was in Harry's 'Old World', but it made a weird sort of sense to receive a letter just as he was thinking of him. The slightly shady circumstances, and that Harry would need an invisibility cloak made Harry wonder if this Dumbledore was somehow connected to his travel from his world to this one, but decided that he would think about it when the time came for it. He was having too much fun in this world to wonder what had become of his old one. He briefly considered the Prophecy, and realized that he should feel guilty about not fulfilling it for Dumbledore, but also realized that he didn't at all. It was enough for him that _this_ world, and more importantly, Hera, would be safe, after Hera defeated Voldemort.

Quickly quashing thoughts as to why Hera was more important than the world, Harry dumped the contents of the envelope out, revealing OWL scores. Wondering what Dumbledore had fabricated for him, he looked at the scores, and was surprised to see, that he had received O's in Potions, Herbology, and Care of Magical Creatures, an EE in Defense Against the Dark Arts, Ancient Runes and Astronomy, and an A on History of Magic, Transfiguration, and Charms. "Bugger," Harry whispered. He had always liked Charms, so it was a pity that Dumbledore hadn't seen fit to qualify him for the Charms NEWT course. He could always study it on his own, of course, but there was a difference between being able to say to a potential employer, "I studied some charms!" and being able to say to a potential employer, "I got an O on my Charms NEWT!"

After weighing his options, he decided to go with NEWT Care of Magical Creatures, NEWT Ancient Runes, which he had had to start learning anyways, for the Runes work, and regular Charms, in addition to NEWT Potions and NEWT Defense. He wrote in neat cursive, 'Brian Wilson', as he had long ago decided that Brian Wilson would be his Hogwarts persona, and that Mortimer Saignant would be his working name. Giving it back to the owl, the owl began its long journey back to Hogwarts.

Harry lay on his pillow, and contemplated his future. In his old world, he had never really done it, because when he was eleven or twelve, he was still too interested in the _now_ to worry about the _later_, and when he was thirteen and fourteen, he had been busy being angry over not being able to live with Sirius, and wondering why anyone ever had to die at all. Even in the part of the summer before Harry had . . . moved, he had spent an exorbitant amount of time contemplating his own role in Sirius' death, as well as how he could possibly defeat one of the most powerful wizards of the century. Now, he had the opportunity to wonder whether he would enjoy working with wards for the rest of his life, or with Fred and George's shop. Fred and George's shop was quite fun, and quite lucrative, although taxing on his body. He had no idea how he managed to work ten hour days, and then go home and study for another few hours. Fred and George would just sleep the instant they got home. On the other hand, there was whatever Dumbledore had planned for him. It seemed likely that he had been the one who had extracted him from his 'old' world, and he most likely wouldn't have done it without a sound reason.

Harry heard the sound of knuckles rapping on wood, and twisted his head around to see George knocking on the table. "C'mon Mr. Public Relations, rise and shine!" he joyfully cried.

Harry grinned, having long ago gotten used to the Weasley twins' different types of humor. "Give me a few more minutes, mum," he groaned, miming pulling covers over his head. George summoned his pillow, and Harry got up, groaning for real. "Oy. Where do I have to be today, anyway?" he asked George.

"You're going with Katie to a birthday party at 'Leesh's house," George told him, looking through the fridge for something to snack on. "I'd come, but her parents aren't so fond of me. Think I'm a bad influence, same for Fred."

Harry shrugged, and warmed up the leftovers from the night before, chicken soup. "That's fair, I think." George shot a mild stinging charm towards him, which was deflected by the shield ring that he wore at all times, forcing George to dodge his own spell.

"Bugger," George muttered as the stinging spell crashed over his head into a glass bowl, creating a pinging sound.

Harry smirked, and after dumping equal portions of soup into two bowls, he charmed them to not let any liquid fall out if not accompanied by metal, or plastic. "Here you go," he said, handing them to George who was snacking on some tough carrots. "One for each of you. Go ahead, I'm going to take a shower and apparate after you."

George grumbled briefly about the small portions, but threw his carrot in, and apparated off. Fred rushed in a few seconds later, his shirt partially tucked in, and whipping his head around, looking for George. "He's gone to work," Harry informed him. Fred grinned, before apparating out. One of the nice things about the job was that Harry had learned how to apparate from Fred and George, and that he had been able to skip the usually long waiting lists from the ministry for approval of an apparation license on the grounds that he needed it for his job.

Harry took a long, relaxing shower, and slipped into sweat pants and a hoodie before donning his robe, and apparating to the shop. He was about to head for the back, when he realized that Fred was giving him a shooing motion, toward the door. He turned around, and was slightly surprised to see Katie already there, leaning on a wall, casually waiting for him.

"C'mon Brian, let's go," she commanded.

He shrugged, grinning, and linked his arm through hers. "Where are we going?" he asked.

"We're attending a party tonight, so we're going to go have some pre-party fun.

"Like what, going clothes shopping?"

She laughed briefly. "How stereotypical. Not necessarily, we could go and check out some of the restaurants, hang out outside of the convenience store, whatever." As they walked out of the store, she stopped dead, jerking his arm. "Actually," she said pensively, "What are you wearing right now, under your robe?"

"Um . . . Sweats and a hoodie," he answered.

She rolled her eyes, and started pulling him forward again. "The clothes of a man who has given up," she quoted. "Yeah, we're going shopping." Feeling the galleons that Fred had slipped him in his left hand, he let himself be led away into Madame Malkins'.

An hour and a half later, Katie had selected jeans of precisely the right shade of dark blue, as well as, after much deliberation, a black button-down shirt. They went to lunch at WacArnolds with a few of Katie's wizard friends, and after enjoying some Big Wacs, over to Katie's house in London to prepare for the party.

Katie's house was about as large as Sirius' at Grimmauld place, but much lighter, and more welcoming. Harry was quickly redirected to the basement, which was surprisingly large. Harry wondered that the house didn't cave in, and although the supports were most likely what prevented that, he wondered if Katie had protected it herself with magic. The muggle friends weren't there yet, so after they were introduced to each other, he took the opportunity to talk to them about the various new products that Fred and George had recently put out, and, as the twins had instructed, told them that they could get the special friend discount on ParaShields for their clothes, which was that the charms were completely free. As a show of good faith, Harry charmed the clothes of anyone who wanted, to hold a shield.

For a little while after, they were all fairly interested in the products, but after he had given their basic descriptions, and had launched into the details of the production, which were to him the really fascinating part, they began to drift away, until finally, only Katie and Harry were left. Seeing that everyone was gone, Harry sighed, and took a swig of his water. "Oh well," he muttered, examining the bottom of his glass awkwardly.

"You win some, you lose some," she reassure him with a smile, before tilting back her head and emptying her plastic cup of some brown fizzy drink.

Harry smiled. "Thanks, Katie." He raised his voice, and continued, "I'll keep in mind that most laymen are too uncouth to understand the creative genius that is WWW."

Several of Katie's friends turned, and laughed. One of them, who Harry didn't know gave him the two-fingered salute, and Katie began to laugh too. "Fuck you, Wilson," she added for good measure.

Harry gave a small snort, before returning to gazing at his glass, a little uncomfortable. For most of his life, he had been pretty solitary, and even in Hogwarts, he only really associated regularly with two people. On the quidditch team, it was just Fred and George, and in the rest of life, it was just Ron and Hermione. Although he had gotten a bit of experience with other people through keeping the store while Fred and George worked on some of their more delicate projects, he couldn't decide what steps to take to try to force a friendship with any of the other people at the party. Obviously, connections were useful with anyone, if only for something to do when Flyfeather wasn't around, but he couldn't imagine how to go about making them, especially since most of the people at the party were girls, and had already moved into smaller groups with their friends.

He looked up again, and noticed that Katie had drifted off, probably to refill her glass with whatever she was drinking. Deciding to take this as a cue from some higher being, he walked over to the sole group of boys, who were mostly sipping the same fizzy drink as Katie, and motioned for one of them to shove over. One of them did, and they all formally introduced themselves again. The one with the brown hair and eyes was Chuck, the one with the strong overbite was James, the quiet one with glasses was Tom, and the fat boy was Pete. Still nursing his water, he wondered how people remembered him, now that he wasn't "The one who's Harry Potter."

As he concluded his introspective and slightly hopeful musings, he noted that Pete was telling a tale. "So, I went down to the store yesterday–"

Suddenly, Tom interrupted, surprising Harry a bit, who hadn't heard the bespectacled boy speak before. His deep voice was a small surprise, as it delivered very casually, "I went down on your mother yesterday."

A few snickers went around the group, and Pete cracked a smile. "As I was saying," he continued as the laughs died down, "there was this totally banging girl who was just standing there in the middle of the sidewalk, looking at the side of the building."

Again, Tom interjected, "Your mother's about as big as the side of a building."

This was followed by a laughter, although Harry noted that Pete wasn't even smiling anymore. "So I go and buy the newt's eyes that my mum sent me out for, when I decide to go over and ask the chick what she was looking at. Suddenly, this little boy comes running out of the wall–"

Quickly, Tom fit in, "More like your cum was running out of a little boy's ass." This was followed by the loudest round of laughs yet, and a small admonishment, from James, who thought that was a little far, and Pete, who was quietly simmering, and unconsciously gritted his teeth. Harry suspected that it would probably be considered baring his teeth if he was an animal.

"And the wall doesn't even shimmer," he continued, trying to ignore Tom's prods. "It's like the other way to get into Chuck's house, you know. So I tried to do the wall, you know, like walking through it, and–"

With a hint of triumph, Tom blurted out, "Sort of like how I did your mother. You know. On the wall."

Pete exploded. There was no other word for it. One moment he was listening with pursed lips, and the next, he was advancing towards Tom, who was laughing outright now. Pete looked murderous, and Harry began to laugh alongside the other boys. He had a feeling that pushing him to the edge was a sort of sport to Tom, and realized that that was probably why he was invited to things like this, as a sort of entertainment, although his jokes weren't all that funny.

"If you tell one more god_damn_ 'your mom' joke, I swear, I will fucking stab you," Pete muttered, his fists clenching and unclenching.

"I stabbed your mother. With my penis," Tom said, with a smirk.

Pete let loose a bizarre and primal scream, and began to wring Tom's neck. Tom began to laugh, and waved off Harry, who was making to try to save him from Pete's clutches. Chuck shook his head. "Don't worry, Tom's has charms to prevent his untimely death from strangulation–that's why he can still breathe." Turning away from the slightly uncomfortable scene, he changed the subject ably. "By the way, Brian," he began, "I'm trying to convince James that he'd look like shit if he started wearing tight pants."

"Not exactly an expert on men's fashion, Chuck," Harry backed up.

"Come on, we just need a second opinion. I think they're aesthetically attractive, and Chuck disagrees," James said with a grin, ignoring Pete and Tom as easily as Chuck.

"They look like they could be your _sister's_ pants," Chuck drawled derisively.

"They are," James countered easily.

"That's a really fantastic first impression," Harry informed him with a laugh. So, it wasn't that hard to forge connections.

"I'm sorry, that's probably just the coke talking," he said with a smile, drinking another glass.

Harry nodded, not particularly understanding. He was about to ask about it, when Chuck pocketed his Pastille Pastie, and Pete stopped strangling Tom, and causally, Katie's muggle friends came over. There ensued another round of introductions, of which Harry caught maybe a third, and the group of boys widened, with Katie and a group of muggle girls joining them. He felt a tad left out as they debated the pros and cons of the popular bands of the day. Harry decided it was most likely a good decision to become familiar with popular and current artists–it wouldn't do for WWW employees to look uncouth, after all.

As the party dragged on, he would occasionally find something to add to the conversation, when they compared school experiences, but he felt more and more disappointed with how foreign most of the world was to him. Why hadn't he known about any of this stuff in the world, he asked himself internally.

Without a moment's notice, Harry decided that he needed to be somewhere else. Somewhere where Hera was. He excused himself to the bathroom, and crossing his fingers, he apparated to Hera's room.

She was in her room, packing her trunk, and at the cracking sound of his apparation, she turned around and screamed.

Harry heard someone yell, "Upstairs!" and the banging of feet upon the wooden stairs.

"Sorry, it's me, Mort," he said. After a few seconds of her still not understanding, he removed realizing that he was still wearing Viktor Krum's face, he removed the mask.

"Oh! You," she said with a sign of understanding. "But why are you here?"

"Figured you might be able to use some help. And since I could apparate here, that must mean whatever wards you had for protection have fallen."

"Bugger," she muttered irritably, before a speculative look came upon her face. "Do you think you can apparate us out?"

"Don't want to take the chance of splinching, that would be pretty disastrous, since we can't come back and put your head back on. This room is pretty defensible anyway. We can fight."

Hera looked panicked once again. "Fight? I've never been in a duel before!"

It was interesting, the way that she was both very different and very similar. Very strange indeed. "You sent out the owl though, correct?" At her nod, he raised up the bed with a flick of the wand, carved out a good deal out of the bottom, and motioning for her to crawl under, dropped the bed back down. "Send hexes at their feet."

A second later, a Death Eater opened the door, and managed an inarticulate scream of surprise before Harry got him with a stunner. He moved slowly towards a corner, knowing that his best hope was to get them with the first shot, and wondering where the order member who was supposed to be guarding the home was. He shot two blasting charms towards the door, hoping to both shut it and alert the guard that something was wrong, and in a lucky coincidence, managed to hit it right before someone who trying to get in. A few seconds later, he stumbled in again, his nose bloody, and his wand aimed towards the middle of the room. Harry raised his wand to fire again, but he dropped to a full-body binding hex before Harry could do anything.

"Good job," he muttered, keeping an eye on the door.

He heard a muffled thanks, and cast a few more blasting charms on the door, knocking it off of its hinges. There were voices arguing past the door, and a shriek rang out after the door was blown off its hinges, followed by nervous laughter. Harry cast _colloportus_ on the door, and a few of the ParaShield charms, adjusted for a static item. It wouldn't do for the door to turn into a curtain, after all.

Sure that they had at least a few moments to spare, Harry chanced a look outside the window. The neighbors had come out of their houses, so they were definitely causing a ruckus. He had no idea why the Order wasn't there yet, however. Thinking of the Order, he suddenly remembered last year's escape plan.

Harry lifted up the bed again, and beckoned for Hera to come out. "We have a few minutes of peace to try to escape," he whispered. "Do you have a broom, by any chance?" he queried hopefully.

"Er, yes, Sirius gave me one a few years back–haven't used it though, didn't want to hurt myself," she admitted.

"Let's see it," he said softly, with a grin.

"I . . . it's really fast Mort, we could be putting ourselves into more danger by using it than we'd face just against these guys."

"You know," he said speculatively, "I think I heard them say that Voldemort was coming next . . ." he lied.

Hera bit her bottom lip. "Fuck you." Throwing open her trunk, she dug through to the bottom, where there sat, in all of its majesty, an unused, mint-condition third edition Firebolt™.

A smile grew on his face. "Perfect," he breathed. With a wave of his wand, and a quick, "_Pack_!" her trunk was packed, and with another wave, it became miniaturized. "Pocket the trunk, and then get on," he ordered, mounting the broom.

Hesitantly, she slid on behind him. He waited for a few seconds, and then commanded, "Hurry up, put your arms about my waist. You said it yourself, it's fast." She quickly moved to do as he said. "Comfortable?" he asked.

"Yeah," she responded, her face muffled slightly by his robe.

Adeptly, he cast sticking charms on her arms, and ignoring her howls of indignation, flew off as the death eaters burst into the room. Rather than waiting around to see if their curses flying randomly out of the window would hit him, he set about fleeing them, and getting into cloud cover.

Harry instructed Hera to look for planes, figuring that they could just follow them to an airport, since he didn't really know where he was going. They flew for a few miles in the clouds, without seeing any planes, when Hera shouted in his ear, "6 o'clock! 6 o'clock!" He made an abrupt turn, making her scream into his robe, but he saw the plane clearly, and rose to about a hundred feet in the air above it, before rocketing towards it. They followed the plane as closely as they could, although at times it felt to Harry as if the plane was barely moving. There is a considerable difference between being able to cover 600 miles in an hour and being able to cover 600 miles in four seconds. Nonetheless, they found their way to the airport after half an hour, and the two of them took a taxi from Gatwick to Grimmauld Place.

Hera promised Harry, "I know it's a safe place, don't worry about it," and he smiled, nodding, wondering if she realized that it was no longer under fidelius. He could see it, and he doubted that fidelius had crossed over the border of dimensions with his wand, since this was clearly a different Grimmauld place. He told her he'd wait for a few minutes, to make sure she was safe, and to say goodbye. On her order, he turned around, and within a few minutes, she was back outside.

"Most of the Order is cleaning out the Death Eaters who were lingering in the house. They had stunned my relatives and the Order Member guarding the house, since they didn't know whether or not there were some sort of curses that would be activated with their deaths, so they're fine." She paused, and asked delicately, "Do you know what the Order of the Phoenix is?"

"I know enough," he said, cutting her off. "Is this house safe?"

She shook her head, no. "Many of the wards fell when my Godfather died, and until they tie them back to the Black heiress, me, which could take a while, I'm going to another safe house."

Harry nodded with understanding. It was basically what he had expected. "Good. By the way, Viktor Krum's face is the one I'll be wearing at school," he informed her, donning his mask. A little shorter, different hair, maybe crossed with another mask if necessary, he added to himself. It wouldn't do to be going about as a celebrity, anyway. He flashed her a grin, and apparated back to the party.

It was a bit peculiar, he noted. Music was cranked up to the maximum volume, and people were walking into each other. He got himself some more water, and almost spilled it on himself when he realized that a muggle girl he didn't know was rubbing herself on him, accompanied by a boy who seemed to be supporting her and leading her around. Basically everyone was laughing uproariously, and Harry, puzzled, but getting the feeling that something funny was up, went to the bathroom to relieve himself.

Unfortunately for his bladder, Katie was throwing up in the toilet, and suddenly everything came together. The drink that everyone was having was some sort of spiked coke. Spiked with what, he didn't know, but it just served as an example to him how obvious the gaps in his social knowledge were. Obviously, everyone else had known and expected it, judging by Chuck's comment previously.

Harry wasn't really sure of standard procedure when assisting someone in emptying their guts into a toilet bowl, but was relatively sure that holding someone's hair was applicable here. He did so, and Katie began to thank him, before the bile rose up in her throat again, and some more watery vomit dripped out of her mouth. After it stopped seeping out, she, with Harry's aid, made her way to the mirror and sink, and Harry helped her wash the vomit off of her face with a paper towel, taking care to trash it after they were done.

Harry decided that it was silly to let Katie stay as insanely drunk as she was, especially since she wasn't the only one–what would happen if two people had to bow to the porcelain god at the same time? "Come on Katie, we're going to Alicia's room," he said, as if to a small child. Her face lit up, and she stopped having to lean on him as much, as she led the way to Alicia's room. Mercifully, they didn't run into Alicia's parents, who seemed to be out of the house, judging by the light fixtures, which were all off.

Once they were in Alicia's room, Harry quickly found her trunk, opened it up, and rifled through it for Jigger's Magical Drafts and Potions. He could at least perform this potion easily. Within a few seconds, he had a good fire going, one of the ones that Hermione had found in first year, and within a few minutes, the sobriety potion was ready. He conjured at glass bottle, bottled some of the viscous yellow fluid, and waited for five minutes, putting away the cauldron and making sure that Katie didn't do anything especially loud or stupid. Within that time, he decided that he needed to get back to the flat and tell Fred and George about Hera.

Judging the potion finally cool enough to drink, he managed to convince Katie to drink it, and within minutes, she was sober again, and slightly amused. Schooling his face into an expressionless mask, he looked at her severely. "We're leaving," he announced definitively.

Katie took a glance out the window. "What time is it?" she asked with a yawn.

"Twelve," he responded tersely.

"That early?" she asked with surprise. "C'mon Brian," she cajoled him, "we usually stick around for at least another hour. You've been having fun, right?"

He took a breath, trying to quickly balance the pros of getting home to Fred and George and telling them about Hera versus the cons of not letting Katie have a good time. He shook his head to clear it. What was he thinking? Of course Hera was more important than Katie. She was the most important girl in the world. "You're too sober, people will be suspicious. We gotta go, Katie."

She nodded, slowly. "That's true. And I over-drank, anyway–I wouldn't have remembered the party anyway." She smiled briefly. "You're cute when you're thinking."

Ignoring the comment, too busy to really think about it right now, Harry looked around for a second, before noticing the window. It had a ledge outside for them to stand on as they disapparated, and people wouldn't really notice the noise. He was pretty good at apparating by himself, but his side-along apparation was still like a gunshot. She pouted prettily, while Harry opened Alicia's window. "Being rational is so much less _fun_," she complained, with a teasing lilt to her voice. Harry detected a trace of something else, but decided it was nothing. He was more worried about the girl who meant more than the world, anyway.

Harry gave her a small smile, before climbing out of the window, and onto the ledge. She joined him shortly thereafter, and with a sound like a cannon, they were back in Katie's house.

"I'm home, mom!" she called happily into the darkness of the house.

"We heard," someone yelled back, the voice muffled.

Katie gave Harry a quick hug, and a kiss on the cheek. His mind still on Hera, he gifted her with a thoughtless smile, and disapparated again, this time much more quietly.

When he got home, Harry reassessed his priorities. It appeared that he'd need to keep on learning more about wards to properly protect Hera. How had he known that he needed to leave, he wondered.

* * *

A/N: Oodles of kudos go to Dellacouer, who read the chapter over for me and suggested some great changes (check out Della's work, it full of win), and dragonofAlagaesia, who betaed it. Also, thanks CGB for the great eye for detail.

In other news, I have started work on my other stuff again, namely WotR but since I was just infected with live influenza, that might, ah, how do you say . . . stop. This chapter was mostly because I had run out of inspiration for WotR and decided, "Why the hell not work on something simple?" It was also practice to see if I could remember how to write. I'd like to know if any of you guys think it's any good, or if I need to work on some writing exercises to get back in shape.

Fun fact: I tried NaNoWriMo this year but only managed to total . . . 500 words. Which is a new low for me. Go me, I guess.


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